


Scum and Villainy, Part II: Villainy

by msdaphne



Series: Without A Cause [6]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aliases, Multi, Poe Dameron's broken heart, Poe Dameron's innate affinity for droids, Prostitution, Recreational Drug Use, Space Pirates, Subdrop, Teen Vogue, a nod at canon, bigoted language, egregiousy under-negotiated bdsm, language barriers, psychological disarray, sex tourism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-07 03:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 53,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13426032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msdaphne/pseuds/msdaphne
Summary: Running away to seek fortune or death on Tatooine was such a cliché. As it turns out, a pirate-friendly town fueled by sex, drugs, and open secrets might be exactly where our hero needs to be right now.(This is kind of a country mouse story. Or maybeFritz the Cat Goes to Mos Eisley. Anyway, there's stupid amounts of sex in it.Stupidamounts; I can't even fit it all on screen.)CNTW because, while none of the Warnings apply to the events in this story, they are referenced in places. And Poe still has a pretty violent imagination at this point in his journey.





	1. Petrel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having made a successful getaway from the [scum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774128), Poe spends his last few hours on Socorro building a new alias.

* * *

 

There was no grav control on paralifts. He watched his carpal bones stand up from the backs of his hands, watched the flesh sag away from his neighbors' skulls and teeth. But even as his body pressed into his seat, the weight of a generation lifted from his heart; he was free, or nearly free.

His brain rose faster than the blood in his body, and his vision narrowed, narrowed to the blinking trajectory graph on the back of the seat in front of him. Freedom was a gift, he knew. And gifts are free. He was free; he was meant to be free. Meant to be... he was  _obliged_  to be free... no, that wasn't right... he wanted... he was...

...the tunnel closed.

...

His stomach lurched, blood crashed to the top of his skull like a sledgehammer. People around him were throwing up. The lift settled. Vakeyya. He was nearly free.

...

He was still woozy as he took in the departing flights. It was just a wall of Core worlds and blinking numbers. Fuck. He didn't want to have to hustle on the tarmac, didn't want to draw attention. He just wanted to pay his fare and get the fuck away. He blinked and blinked until an Outer Rim destination resolved before his eyes, as if he willed the flight into being: Tatooine. 2200. Three hours from now.

Not what he would have asked for; not yet, anyway. Yes, he felt drawn there. _It_  had always imagined that Tatooine would be a good place to go to be sucked under, to drown and die.

But.

Now? So soon? He'd thought he'd have a few weeks, at least, to knock around and be knocked around. That he'd find his way there  _in extremis_ , that he'd know when it was time.

There was also a flight to Ryloth, eight hours from now. That was too long; they'd be looking for him by then.

So. Tatooine.

   _Three hours, huh?_

He wanted those last few weeks, and he knew exactly what to do with three hours.

 

* * *

 

He made his way into a souk, and into a craps game. He lost a few credits, but they bought him a randomly generated set of numbers. He used them to flesh out the time and longitude of Tarbel's birth, which he recited to the first Lando impersonator to accost him, offering to tell his fortune.

Tarbel's sun sign was the sand petrel. Frequently mistaken for buzzards, they soared over the vast deserts, rarely touching ground, diving to prey on lizards. In the zodiac, it signified the  _wise and silent observer_.

His moon sign was the magu, a plant that flourished in toxic environments where few others would grow. Its root was a well-known poison, but the seeds were sometimes used as an analgesic by the daring and the desperate. In the zodiac, it meant  _hope._  In popular culture, Magu was a common nickname for gangsters, both in real life and in holos, implying  _dangerous_  and  _irredeemable_.

His nadir was the waterfall. Had he been born a few hours earlier or later, it would have represented the life-giving spring, but as it was, it represented the destructive flood. The street-corner artist studied his face and body as he wove facile advice: A flood-quenched plain would offer too much hope, allowing invasive seeds to sprout and overshadow the hardy but sparse magu. A flood, too, would cool the earth and drive the petrels away to higher winds and better hunting. The question for Tarbel, then, was: what was the flood, in his life? For that was the enemy of his protectors.

He smirked like a skeptical tourist and tipped the guy. As he walked away, he had to remind himself that he wasn't as naked to everyone as the guy had made him feel. It was the guy's job, after all.

 

...

 

 _Petrel_. He liked it, but it sounded too much like the names he'd been known by already.  _Magu_ , on the other hand, was pretty badass.

Dangerous. Irredeemable.

Too badass, he had to admit. Nothing marked a stooge like a persona they couldn't live up to. He wasn't a Magu. He didn't look like a Magu. He looked like a Petrel. But that sounded so much like a combination of  _Poe_ and  _Tarbel_. It was like he was in a maze, and every time he thought he saw a way out, it deposited him back at the center, at himself.

But did he need to be anyone else? Maybe he was a fraction of the person he'd once been, but the fraction was nothing new. This fraction had always been there. Stuffed in a closet at the back of his mind, maybe, but it had always been there. And now it was free. No obligations. No desires, even, but the most superficial ones. He was a free being.

 _A free being_. He liked the sound of it. He didn't feel like one, yet, but he liked the sound of it. 

 

...

 

He bought a vibroblade that fit in his boot and a deceptively sleek, inconspicuous little blaster pistol with a custom holster. It was sweet. It was sexy. It was very expensive. Maybe he'd taken too much of the money.

 

...

 

Petrel wiped kebab grease from his lips with the cuff of his jacket. A Magu would wear this jacket, he thought. Maybe Magu was an imaginary boyfriend he could invoke, if he needed to.

Magu bought him a pair of signet rings, inlaid with the glyphs that represented the twin zodiac signs. Like the blaster, they were expensive and deceptively elegant. Very pretty, but also heavy enough to break the teeth of most humanoids. He had them both fitted to his left middle finger, since his right hand was still swollen from the fight that, from here, felt like it had happened a month ago.

 

 ...

 

He made his way back to the port, buzzing with the yin/yang energy of Petrel and Magu, about to leave forever the homeworld they had just begun to inhabit. Tatooine didn't know what it had coming.

The sweet little blaster in his trousers teased him. It was light and streamlined, its pressure against his hipbone firm and confident with one stride and lifting away with the next. Even the way it drew his fingers- he didn't look like someone touching their weapon for reassurance. He looked like someone touching their own body because they were perpetually horny. And he was, he was horny for the gun. He was going to make love to it, first chance he got.

 

* * *

 


	2. Raven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for brief, casual use of homophobic language. In previous works in this series I redacted such language, because it showed Poe compartmentalizing under stress. Things are different, now, and foul language is pretty endemic to this particular destination.
> 
> As always, feel free to yell at me about this choice.

* * *

 

He had to laugh at himself when he realized why he'd taken this particular seat on the transport. And maybe, even, be a little proud of himself; maybe he wasn't _all_ bad. Because without even thinking about it, he'd just done exactly what Poe Dameron would have done: identified the most vulnerable looking person among the rough crowd of passengers and kept his eye on them.

That person, in this case, was an elderly-looking Pa'lowek woman. (Of course, they all looked somewhat elderly to his human eye.) He greeted her politely as he strapped in next to her, and got only the most perfunctory of nods in return. At some point she took out her knitting, finishing a tiny onesie. He told her it was cute; she scowled and said it was supposed to be _warm_. That too, he agreed. It looked very warm. And then he shrugged to himself and closed his eyes.

He tried to picture a Pa'lowek infant snug in a hand-knit onesie. He didn't want to think about Socorro or anything that had happened there. He was headed to a new destination, now; maybe his last.

 

Tatooine had also prospered under the New Republic- at least, for a while. For a while, it had been as much a tourist destination as Socorro was now. Mos Eisley and its environs had been witness to the birth of a new hope in a hopeless galaxy. It quickly became a pilgrimage site for the Force-believing faithful. Later, once the Hutts were driven out, others came: veterans like the ones he'd just been with, students, historians, patriots, anyone with disposable income and an appreciation for the price of liberty. Even the barren landscape came to be seen as iconic, attracting artists of all genres.

Cottage industries thrived on peddling "relics" from _the very same_ junker that had picked up R2D2 and C3PO. Guides of varying reliability took pilgrims out to meditate in "Old Ben's cave," or to lay off-world flowers in the ruins of the "Lars homestead." Needless to say, the exact location of these sites varied widely depending on the guide.

The desert outpost expanded to accommodate the masses, and boomtown credits were there to to finance development: hostels, kitchens, moisture projects (the name _Lars Industries_ was snapped up quickly, and the only person alive to contest it didn't care to.) The port grew by bounds, to bring in food and water and gas and workers. Crime plummeted; the locals figured out very quickly that it was more profitable to milk the golden bantha than to knife it in a back alley.

And then.

Then, Skywalker's temple fell. He had failed, and cynicism swept over his homeworld like a plague. Tourism never dropped off entirely, but other than the most devout, they came for different reasons, now. Some- including a young family on Petrel's flight- even came to venerate _Vader's_ origins. Pirates were once again welcomed; you could buy _anything_ there. The hostels one by one became brothels, and even in the boom times booze had always been cheaper than water. The Hutts no longer ran the place, but it regained its reputation for being dangerous and unkind.

Running away to seek fortune or death on Tatooine was such a cliché. Almost painfully cliché. But he hadn't had much choice.

 _Destined for it_ , Ben had said, and the word still made him smirk.

 

_...He could taste the poisoned drink on his raw, bleeding lips, feel the bonesharp lightning of a truncheon to the back of the head. Feel clothes tugged from his limp body, rough hands propping him up, a wad of thick xeno saliva, pain he would know too late, if at all..._

 

He felt heat and weight growing in his pants; were the passengers on the opposite bench staring at him? He looked down, dragging his eyes across his lap on their way to the floor. He crossed his legs, pulled his satchel into his lap, and folded his arms over it.

They were probably just looking at his pretty face, probably not reading his mind and seeing his sick daydreams, probably not recognizing him from wanted notices pinging all over the galaxy. He offered a tentative little smile to the guy across from him and received a familiar one back: the bashful smile of a straight guy caught looking, a guy that found his face a comfortable place to rest his eyes. Relieved, he nodded in acknowledgment, let his own eyelids flutter closed again, and put his head back.

 

_...His bones bleaching in the sand under twin suns, after the last of the living had had their way with him: the carrion birds, the worms, the maggots, the beetles..._

 

When they dropped out of hyperspace, he leaned over and asked the woman quietly, so that no one else could hear, if she'd ever been to Tatooine before. Why the hell would she travel to a nasty sandpile like this if she didn't have to, she retorted. He admitted he hadn't either, and asked if she had any idea where he might find _safe_ accommodations. Not where she was going, she said. Her niece had just given birth, and she was going to take the baby away so it didn't have to grow up in that shithole where she worked. Which was, he asked? She glowered at him, offended.

Ah. Of course.

She didn't seem to want anything to do with him, which was fine; it was none of his business, he'd just been being friendly. But then as they disembarked, an oily looking dandy with _grifter_ written all over him sidled up and asked her if Petrel was bothering her. She scowled at him- her default expression, it seemed- and told him to _leave us alone, sleemo_.

Thus did he find himself appointed her escort, standing behind her while she groused over the handwritten directions, watching her back and keeping taller people from walking into her. Her name was Nupple, but he could call her Aunt Nup. They found the place with much less trouble than it sounded like, to hear her muttering.

 

It was cooler inside, the thick stone walls blocking out the suns. Instead of windows, there were high, narrow slits for ventilation. The walls were thick enough that the slits wouldn't admit direct sunlight except at dusk and dawn. They were brilliant, he thought.

It was also rather... _gender binary_ inside. The men were mostly on the large side, dirty and clad in heavy leather if not straight up armor. The workers, on the other hand, appeared to be exclusively women, lingerie on display under half-fastened clothes. It was like some kind of costume party, some kind of holo parody of heterosexuality.

Petrel dropped his hand to Nup's shoulder protectively. He held her against his side as he shouldered their way up to the bar, where her eyes just barely peeked over the edge. He leaned down to ask her neice's name; it was _Doot_.

He caught the bartender's eye quickly. She smiled at him, looking him up and down.

"Hey stranger. Start you off with a drink?"

"No thanks. You know if Doot's available?"

"Who?"

"Doot. Like her," he nodded down at Nup. The bartender leaned over the bar to see, and then... _squealed_.

"Oh! You must be Lily's aunt!"

"I don't know, how many of my kind you got here expecting company?" she growled.

The barmaid consulted a rota and then beckoned one of the house girls, who appeared _very_ pleased with this assignment. She licked her lips and looked Petrel over like a starving woman facing down a custard pie. Until she looked down and noticed Nup at his side, and broke into the same warm smile as the bartender.

"Are you Lily's aunt?!"

"Well, I'm someone's aunt."

She introduced herself as Raven, and it was _a pleasure_ to meet them both. The bartender nodded back through a curtained arch. Petrel started to demur, "Well, if you know where you're going, you probably, ah,"

 _Probably don't need me anymore_ , he was going to say, but Raven's hand had already slid up under his jacket, and she was steering him away with her fingernails.

 

Apparently, he hadn't known enough Pa'lowiks in his time, because he wouldn't have been able to tell that Doot was any younger than her aunt. The baby in her arms, on the other hand, was freaking adorable. Its skin was smooth, almost rubbery, its spots still a pale translucent blue. Its trunk cast around haphazardly until it bumped into its own hand and sucked a skinny finger into its mouth. It was _so tiny_.

 

Aunt Nup would be taking it back on the same transport they'd come on; liftoff was in just two hours. And would Petrel be escorting her back to the port, Raven asked?

"Doesn't sound like he has anything better to do," Nup answered for him, sounding neither hopeful nor grateful about it.

"Uh, no, I don't have anywhere to be. I'd love to."

"Well, then," Raven purred, "We'll just let you two have some time to catch up." Her nails curled around his flank and nudged him back into the corridor. He went with her, but clarified that he wasn't actually there as a customer. She knew that, she said.

"Um, this might be a stupid question."

She chuckled and made a curious little noise.

"Um. Is there actually much of a, you know, a market for that?"

"For what, honey?"

"For," he nodded back, "for _Pa'loweks_?"

She laughed, a well-practiced little tinkle, as if she were _delighted_ to find herself in the company of such charming wit. It told him that it had in fact been a stupid question.

"That's not what she does here," she burbled, as if to a very silly child.

"Oh."

She pinched his side.

"Sorry. I don't know," he gestured down the hallway, meaning _anything about all this_. "I mean it takes all kinds, right? Never mind. I should stop talking."

"Mmm, good boy," she agreed.

She palmed them into her room. It was small, like the one he'd been in on Naboo, but plainer and rougher. It was dim, lit only by a few small squares cut into the wall, like the slits in the salon. Once the door closed, she rounded on him, looked him in the eye, and said, "Okay, _start talking_."

"What?"

"What's your racket?"

"My what?"

"You gonna tell me you're hanging out with that little old Pa'lowek lady out of the goodness of your fucking heart?"

"No, of course not."

"Listen. I could give a fuck about her, frankly she seems like a bitch."

He winced. "She's not very nice."

"But Lily is my friend, and that's her child, and if you fuck with them you _will_ regret it."

Petrel put his hands up. "I'm not here to fuck with anyone, I swear."

" _So_?" she demanded.

"We were just on the flight together. I've never been here, she's never been here, it just seemed like, you know. A good idea. Like the buddy system or something."

She narrowed her eyes even further. "You think _that lady_ would have your back?"

"Of course not. But you know. If you're with someone already, you're less, you know, approachable. You must do that, right? With your, uh, friends? Co-workers, whatever?"

She pulled back, still scanning him suspiciously.

"And what brought you all the way out here with _nothing better to do_?"

"Um, well-"

"For fuck's sake, put your hands down."

"Thanks. Well, um. It's not so much that I came to be _here_ , as much as to not be somewhere else. If you know what I mean."

"Hmph. Well, _that's_ legit enough," she granted. "So you're just passing through?"

"Uh. Actually. I thought I might look for work here."

"Oh? And what kind of work is that?"

His gaze dropped to the floor. Before he could overthink it, he took a quick breath and went for it. Sort of. He glanced up from her eyes to her hairline, then down to her breasts hanging out of a half-open bodice, and the exposed lacy undergarment that did nothing to hold them in. Down to her deadly-looking heels, around the room, to her bed, her dresser, up to the ceiling, taking in the _smallness_ of the space, and back to her eyes.

She stared back, deadpan, unmoved. He dropped his eyes to the floor again and braced himself for humiliation. There was a pause, the sound of the kind of slow breathing of someone praying for patience, or maybe fighting off a headache.

"I see," she said, finally. "You're just an idiot."

"Yes, ma'am," he agreed.

She swore to herself, but at least she relaxed. She kicked off the dangerous-looking shoes and opened a cabinet next to her dresser. She told him where to hang his jacket and satchel, and handed him a glass of something. She sat in the only chair in the room. There was a low stool, too, but she put her feet up on it, sat back, and looked him over some more, sipping her drink, which turned out to be an overly sweet berry wine.

"So. You think you like sucking cock."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you think you're good at it."

"I do."

"You like listening to whiny drunks bitching about their bosses and their spouses and their fucking docking citations?"

"I- I don't think anyone likes that."

"No. So why you wanna sign up for it?"

"Um." He blinked. It seemed fuzzy and distant, from here, the fate that had been illuminated for him _back there_. "I dunno. It's- hard to explain."

"What were you doing before?"

With his back against the wall and the squares of light in his face, it felt like a proper interrogation. Even the tumbler in his hands seemed to bind them together like handcuffs. He slouched against the wall, trying to _look_ casual, at least.

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"Course you don't," she rolled her eyes. "I mean what other _skills_ do you have?"

"I dunno. I'm a passable mechanic, I guess."

"And?"

"Some coding, I guess. I've worked with a lot of AIs. I'm, uh, fluent in binary."

There was another moment of her sabacc-faced breathing. She tossed back the rest of her wine and set the glass down heavily.

"So. An idiot _and an asshole_."

"Um. Ssure, probably. How does binary-"

"Nobody _chooses_ this, asshole."

"Don't they? I thought some people made good money."

"What, you mean classy bitches? Courtesans? Somehow I don't see you dripping off some fat rich fucker's arm like jewelry at a planetary dinner."

He couldn't see that either. And he wasn't remotely interested; _this_ was the kind of place he belonged. But he felt defensive, and insisted that he cleaned up pretty nice when he tried.

"I'm sure you do. I'm talking about _you_. You're too old, too proud, and too stupid for that kind of work."

"Doesn't matter. I'm not interested in that kind of thing." He finished off his wine. "I'm not proud," he added quietly.

" _Banthashit_."

He shrugged. He should go. Find another place with better prospects.

 

"Pour me another glass," Raven said. "Get yourself one if you want." He obeyed, and when he handed it to her she moved her feet and nodded for him to sit on the stool. And then she put her feet right back in his lap.

"You really know binary?"

He nodded.

"Say something."

He wet his lips and whistled _you are very attractive._ And then, because _attractive_ was just as vague in babno as it was in basic, he amended it by tapping out p-r-e-t-t-y on her dresser, and couldn't help smiling as he did.

"What'd you say?"

"I said you're very pretty," he admitted, blushing a little. Wait, why was he blushing?

_Aw, buddy, c'mon. Seriously._

When she laughed, it sounded slightly less insincere than before.

"You know that's a fucking commodity, right?"

"It's not that uncommon."

"It is around here, pal. A gentleman I know works in one of the bot shops around port. Half the units they get in can't even say what's wrong with 'em."

"Really."

"Well, that's what he says. I suppose it could just be him. He's not that bright."

"Ha. Well, if he's a friend of yours. I'd be happy to talk to him, see if I can help him out."

He realized that his hands had come to rest on her foot, one hand on her ankle, his thumb absentmindedly caressing a hard, semicircular bunion.

There was something surreal about the contrast between the overtly erotic scene- here in her boudoir, she in her lingerie and he in this submissive position- and the rough grating of their respective callouses. He could feel it vibrate up his arm; it was almost audible. He moved his thumb to the side of her foot and tried rubbing a little more firmly.

"Is this okay," he nodded down.

She shook her head in amusement.

"Yeah, it's okay." She took another sip of wine. "Tell you what, kiddo. You go get yourself a real job, something where you can use the half a brain you got. You can always go into port and suck dick for drinking money, if that's what you're into."

He felt a little flash of irritation; it wasn't about being _into_ it. But it was good advice and he thanked her for it.

 

She recrossed her legs to let him at her other foot. He gave it his full attention, then, working it over lightly once and going back to her ankle, whispering _relax, let me_ as he rolled it in his hands. Rubbing his thumbs into the corner of her heel: Where did he learn to do _that_ , she asked. Had he been married? Never, he said, and winked.

[Poe had learned that back in civic school, before he'd ever had sex, even. His friend Bethe got the _worst_ cramps. Kora was the one who read up on helpful massage techniques and shared them with the whole squad. For a while they all got really into reflexology, massaging one another's feet for everything from anxiety to acne, and always, ultimately, for the sheer intimacy of it.]

She inhaled as he smoothed over the tight, tender arch, and moaned as he worked around the sore balls of of her foot, whimpered as he wiggled and circled around the painful sesamoids. He flexed the tarsal plane between his palms, and finally tugged the last of the tension out through her toes. He took back the other foot and made sure it got just as thorough treatment.

When she didn't indicate in any way that he should be done, he moved his hands to her calves. The muscles were hard and ropy under the skin. He loosened them gently with the heels of his palms, taking the safe bet that she couldn't or wouldn't take the time for the kind of aftercare that deep-tissue massage demanded.

"Oh, that's the spot. I get this _pain_."

"Do you think it's from wearing those heels?"

"Of course it's from wearing heels."

Her flesh was smooth, so smooth he had to look up at her face to remind himself that she was human. He asked how she did it. There were lots of ways, she said. She'd gone all-in for actual laser treatment. It was expensive, but permanent. Petrel didn't like the sound of _permanent_. Didn't she ever miss it?

Not on her legs, she didn't. The muff, now, that she was hanging on to. Most of it, anyway. Bald snatches were creepy, didn't he agree? He nodded vehemently. She kept things tidy, she said, but anyone that didn't want to know they were with an _adult_ could see themselves right the fuck out.

He'd always assumed that was a porn thing to facilitate lens angles, not an actual _thing._

"Do guys do that too?" he asked.

"Ugh. I _wish_. If I never met another ball hair again it would be too soon."

He'd meant _working_ guys, but didn't point it out as she seemed pretty passionate on the subject.

"Seriously, you know those nukes that just kill everyone and leave all the buildings? Or the ones that fry droids but don't hurt people? If they could make one of those for man hair? I'd push the button in a fucking heartbeat."

"What about the poor Wookiees?" he cried.

"Aw, fuck the Wookies," she spat, and then laughed. "I don't mean that. I love Wookies. Maybe it would be a thing they have to walk through to get in the building, not a random weapon that just depillates the whole planet."

"I hope not!"

"You probably like that shit, don't you?"

"What, a nice sweaty bush? Hell yeah."

"Ugh. You'd love _this_ place, then."

"I don't know," he frowned. "This seems like kind of a guys-and-gals type place."

"Oh, yeah. They don't want nothing to do with faggots here."

His hands froze, first.

Then he felt it somewhere in his chest, his heart shrinking away, and then surging back, pounding against his ribs. Slowly the sting rose to the surface of his flesh, as surely as if she'd slapped him.

He knew she didn't mean anything by it, at least nothing derogatory. No, the sting came from realizing that he'd been hearing a lot of that, lately. In this life. Ever since- 

It wasn't that he'd never heard it before. But it was rare, and more likely to be said with some kind of underlying affection, or at least _irony_. 

But that was before. Before everything. Before that cranked-up stormtrooper had ignited a rage that seemed to possess him. Before those fashy cadets had sneered in his face right out in the fucking open. And now this-

Was this just what it was like, out here?

Was this the galaxy that Poe Dameron had dedicated his life to protecting?

 

"You don't like that, do you?"

He tried to shape the hurt on his face into something shallow, like mere offense. Tried to marshal the anger that had given him strength, on those previous and too-recent occasions. _Hatred_ , even, had come to him. But it wasn't there, not for her. She wasn't being malicious. She was being honest. Kind, even.

"Of course not," came out as more of a whisper than he'd intended.

She stood and filled their glasses again. It was probably too much, but then again, nothing fucking mattered.

"You have any idea the shit I get called on a daily basis?"

"They can't do that!" He looked up at her, too sincere by half and relieved to shift the focus off himself. "They can't talk to you like that."

"They can, kiddo."

"Aren't they _thankful_?"

"Sure. Some of them. _Most_ of them. But it only takes one asshole to ruin your day."

"Ain't that the truth."

"Am I that asshole?"

"No, honey." He shook his head. "Nothing like it."

He sipped his wine; it was definitely too much.

"Raven. You're too kind. I shouldn't keep you. You must have, you know, stuff to do."

She checked her chrono. "At this point? Hardly worth going back out there. I promised Lily I'd get her high after. She's gonna be a mess."

He couldn't imagine giving up an infant. But he knew people who had. He wanted to go to Doot, kneel at her level, tell her that his parents had done the same thing, that everything was going to be okay. But those weren't his parents, and besides, fucking _look_ at him. He was in no place to be telling anyone what was or wasn't going to be okay.

"She's lucky to have a friend like you."

"Psh. I'm lucky to have a friend like _her_."

And that was when the room dissolved into black, into Poe's worst nightmare, a stellar burst that blinded his plane _and_ his droid, leaving him alone, untraceable, never to be found, in the cold and utter dark, without even his droid to witness his last testament as the ample reserves of compressed oxygen just a meter away sat untapped by the dead machinery around him.

He was alone. Alone, so unbearably, painfully alone.

 

"You okay, honey?"

She stood behind him, slipping her fingers into his hair.

"Just a little drunk, I guess. That stuff was stronger than it tasted."

"Ha! Everything's strong here, darlin'. They don't give water away at booze prices."

Oh, her nails in his hair, on his scalp, oh, it felt so good.

"How much for a glass? I could really use some."

She patted him on the head and went to the cabinet and poured him half a glass of water, _on the house_. He rolled it around as he drank, washing the sweet wine out of his mouth. She went back to running her fingers through his hair. She told him how pretty he was, and that he was good with his hands.

Him? He was good? She was... she ran her nails over his scalp, and oh, stars, it felt like he was made of threads she could snag and tug and unravel, tossing them away in the wind.

"Too bad you're not into pussy. That's where the long credits are."

"I'm not... _not_ into it."

"Lemme guess, your first time was with a girl."

He laughed out loud, _talk about clichés_.

"That wasn't the only time. I was-" he grinned up at her, "I was in an orgy once."

She purred louder, slid one set of nails down his throat.

"You get some good pussy there?"

"Yup. I mean, I was high as the dark side of the furthest moon, but yeah."

She dipped into his shirt; her nails found a nipple easily.

"You still get high?"

"Fuck yeah. But," he lifted his wrist, indicating the time, and pointed lazily toward the door.

"I got some shit wears off pretty fast. You down?"

Inhale.

Oxygen.

_Fuck it._

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm down."

 

* * *

 

He was positive Aunt Nup could tell how fucked up he was, and could probably smell the sex coming off him, too. Hell, she could probably see it flaking off his face. At least he'd had the chance to run his hands under a sonic. Not that she'd have let him touch the baby, anyway.

 

The transport was already boarding when they got there, and he half expected her to just walk right up without even saying goodbye. But she paused and said the nicest thing she'd said to him all day:

"You seem like a decent young man. Try to stay out of trouble."

"I'll try, Aunt Nup. Have a safe trip." He waggled his fingers at the baby. "Bye, baby."

 

He sat on a bench and watched the ship fill. The day had only gotten more brutal, but he felt obliged to wait. He tucked his tongue into the corner of his jaw to stimulate saliva. It was a short-term technique for the discomfort of thirst, no substitute for actual hydration.

The gang closed, and the ship rattled as the repulsors came on line.

_What a piece of shit._

The ship wobbled as it rose, and he imagined it failing, falling, medium craft response drills, _do not enter the craft_ , which panels to release, which fuel batts were most likely to ignite, the ones that would quickly be snowdrifted by fire response in any _civilised_ port.

Like a tooka freeing a stuck claw, the ship finally made altitude and zipped away with spaceworthy nonchalance.

 _Bye, baby_.

 

* * *

 

 


	3. Niner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~Poe~~ takes Raven's advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone knows the name for space turnips, pls respond. I will edit.

* * *

Having to pay for water had always seemed barbaric, in theory. He'd had to do it once or twice, and had found it a minor affront. But the thought of actually  _living_  like this was just... an insult to the dignity of all beings, really. Of course water was scarce on a desert planet, but had these people never heard of taxes and public works and rationing?

Maybe Tatooine was too corrupt for that to work, but still, the flaws in that system would, at worst, result in the  _design_  of this one.

 

He paid as much for a liter as he did for a meal, from a street cart. There were legs of something turning over a broiler, and steamed dumplings, which his stomach liked the looks of. But the thing that caught his eye were a pair of butterflied lizards, rotating slowly.  _Sand petrels eat lizards_. The vendor saw and wrapped one up for him before he could even ask.  _How do you eat it_ , he asked, with his fingers and his face. She handed him a little set of wooden pincers and took his credits.  _And the bones?_

" _Krch krch_ ," she answered, clacking her teeth together.

It was... not the worst thing he'd ever eaten. And he managed to keep his fingers clean.

 

For all its reputation, Mos Eisley in 34 ABY didn't seem all that different than any other pirate city. A few big half-empty facilities dominated the port, and adjunct businesses clung to their skirts. Sector-specific import districts segued into species-friendly entertainment districts, and those into general entertainment. Over it all was the lure of material pleasure, and under it all was the threat to the outsider.

His ostensible object was the bot shop Raven had mentioned, the one where her  _gentleman friend_  worked. He wasn't sure whether Tank was a customer, a friend, or a beau, or which was more likely to get him a welcome. His conversation with her had left him feeling like a bit of a turnip, here. But he was no turnip; he'd been all over the galaxy. He knew how to deflect attention with an unhurried but purposeful stride, with a fifty-meter focus, with sideward looks that showed disdain, rather than curiosity.

One structure captured that curiosity, although he hid it behind a jaded, space-weary front. It was called the Palace Room. It was styled, vaguely, after the palace of the infamous crimelord Jabba the Hutt, at least as it was depicted in the  _Trilogy_ : wide and round and augmented with vestigial turrets. The frame around the doors was carved into sandstone chains, and it advertised  _authentic Huttslaves._

Petrel was both repulsed and attracted, and a bit amused. If he didn't find what he was looking for, he could always come back and check it out.

 

He did find the place, though, and had just a moment of anxiety outside the door, when he realized he'd never done this before.

[Once he'd gotten into the Defense Academy (which was practically a given, anyway) Poe had never really had to ask or apply for a job. He'd certainly never held a "regular" job. Even the Navy in peacetime only offered a regular schedule one week out of three.]

But he had plenty of experience being charming and disarming and asking for favors. The only difference was that he was asking a favor for himself, this time.

 

A Rodian woman sat at the counter, fiddling with an actuator while devoting most of her attention to a holo game. He asked if Tank was available, and she turned, lazily, and hissed around the corner behind her.

There was muttering and the setting down of tools, and the guy came out, wiping his hands on a shop rag. He was younger and handsomer than Petrel expected. Maybe the nickname _Tank_ had suggested a certain type, or maybe he held some unexamined stereotypes about the kind of people that consorted with prostitutes. The guy's hair was bleached by exposure to the suns, and he just exuded  _chill_.

As he emerged further into the room, past banks of mainframes, the rest of his body was revealed; his legs were shriveled and gnarled, and he was perched on a hoverstool, his _chill_ deliberate and defiant.

He looked Petrel up and down, squinting for recognition. He noted the lack of a droid at his side and asked, "Picking someone up?"

Petrel shook his head. "A mutual acquaintance sent me down. Thought I might be able to help you out."

"Acquaintance?"

"Raven?"

Tank's eyes narrowed. So,  _beau_ , then, or at least he wanted to be.

"I just met her 'cause I was helping out her friend. Her friend's aunt, actually."

The friendliness returned, at that.

"Lily? How's she doing?"

"Um, not great? But I think Raven's taking care of her."

"Shit, sit down, give me a sec." He disappeared; there was scraping and clunking as he tidied up his current project. The Rodian woman introduced herself as Odoli. She grunted something polite, and he apologized for not understanding. She shrugged and went back to her game while they waited.

 

Tank was holding out a scant few ounces of water when he returned, obviously a welcoming gesture.

"So you're a friend of Lily's family?"

Petrel explained himself, briefly, and Tank slowly settled back into a frown that asked,  _So did you, or did you not, fuck my girlfriend?_  It may have been her livelihood, but she probably wasn't in the habit of sending guys down to his shop to ask for jobs.

"So we ended up getting pretty lit, if you know what I mean," Petrel concluded, wincing apologetically. "But I told her that I've worked with droids my whole life, and that I'm fluent, and she said you could maybe use that around here."

"Lit."

"Like, the drinks are pretty strong here? And I'm kind of a lightweight with the spice?"

Odoli laughed out loud, and Tank's face softened into a patronizing smirk. She gestured at him as she said something that made Tank laugh, too. He guessed it was something along the lines of  _of course she banged him, look at him_.

"Fluent, huh? What kinds of units have you worked on?"

He rattled off all the units he could think of that had civilian uses, the MR and RRs, the T-series. The pair looked unimpressed. He'd also worked with R-series; they must get those in? They looked a little more interested. His real passion, he admitted, was for AIs. He'd worked with one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art models.

Tank still looked suspicious. He let out a long, sliding whistle. Petrel frowned.

"Am I feeding you an animal?"

Tank tried again; not quite hitting any mark.

"Do you mean," he offered, <" _Am I bullshitting you?" >_

[The term in babno had nothing to do with animals. It was an idiom that had evolved from the term for  _garbage input._  It could mean anything from  _nonsense_  to  _fraud_ , becoming more accusatory the longer it was drawled out.]

Tank grinned; he recognized that much, at least.

"I'm sure it's harder to pick up when you're seeing units from all over," Petrel allowed. "There's so many dialects, on top of different cognitive modalities, and experiential learning and interpretation, not to mention  _personality_. I'd be happy to go over the theoretical framework of the language; maybe that would help the whole thing make more sense?"

"No, no, I've tried all the learning holos. I think it's just a hardware problem." Tank rapped the side of his skull. Raven had said he wasn't very bright, but he understood  _Rodian_ , which seemed a lot harder than binary. Petrel couldn't even imagine it ever making sense to him.

Odoli asked something and nodded toward the back room. Tank nodded.

"Tell ya what, pal. We've got a stubborn case back there. Why don't you come have a look at em and tell us what you think."

 

They led him through the back workshop to one of several locked closets. They cleared out some crates to get to a shoulder-high unit bristling with cooling fins. A C90, Tank said, while they waited for em to boot up.

"Wait, wasn't that an improvement on the M88?"

"A fucking  _mouse_  would be an improvement on the 88s," he retorted. "But yes. Maths and accounting unit. Ey used to program the autoslots at one of the casinos here."

"You sure, man? Weren't M88s bipedal?"

"Yeah, and after  _that_  debacle, they reworked the whole line. They're the reason you don't see a lot of bipeds these days."

Odoli remarked dryly that battle droids probably had something to do with that, too. Petrel recalled reading a theory that people were less likely to try to corrupt or manipulate droids that actually looked like machines.  _Exactly_ , Tank sighed, with the patient air of someone long accustomed to having their wisdom questioned. That's exactly what had happened with the 88s.

 

A green light showed the C90 on line and at full power.

"What's up Niner? How was your nap?"

A flickering orange light showed eir audio receptors receiving the sound of Tank's voice, but the processor indicator pulsed slowly and regularly, almost like a heartbeat.

"I feel ya, buddy," Petrel added. "I don't always feel like waking up, either."

Nothing.

Tank shrugged; this was it.

"Have you tried other ways to communicate? Signs or holotext? Tap code?"

"Old Calamari semaphore?"

Petrel laughed. "I meant more like, a dataport handshake."

"Yeah, we've tried. But ey's not even showing any processor activity. Unless that counts as activity," he pointed at the pulsing light.

"Have you tried swapping out the indicator?"

"Yep."

"Huh." Petrel absentmindedly pulled his shirtsleeve from his jacket and dusted Niner's ocular lenses. "Can I ask what else you've tried already? Or is watching me troubleshoot this from the top part of the audition?"

"Well, I'm not going to make you _do_ it, but yeah, where would you start?"

 

As he thought through the systems and quizzed them on previous attempts, it emerged that Odoli had replaced the powerpack once, when she first started working here.

"Faulty powerpack? That could wreak all sorts of havoc."

Not faulty, she said, just run down.

"Run  _down_? Those things last for decades, as long as the unit-"

Oh, no. This could be bad. This could be very, very bad.

"-as long as the unit keeps  _moving_."

Tank hissed through his teeth, wincing. Petrel felt his stomach drop. He turned back to Niner. "Hey, pal, we're gonna go talk out front for a bit. You're welcome to join us if you want."

He held the door open with a glare, daring the pair of techs to even  _think_  about closing it again.

 

 

"Are you telling me," he gritted, back in the front shop, "that someone, at some point, left that unit at full power in a locked fucking cabinet and just left em there for  _months_? Years, maybe?"

They didn't know how long Niner had been here. They'd been told ey'd worked at The Low Stake, but the casino seemed to have forgotten about em, and  _they_  certainly weren't going to go ask and remind them.

Tank sighed and pulled out a bottle of something. He set it on the counter with a thunk that signified remorse. Petrel wanted to let him have it, to just say _pull em, wipe em,_ do the merciful thing. But he was so _angry_ , and he couldn't let it go.

"Have either of you ever been in solitary confinement?"

Not for longer than an overnight stint in the drunk tank, no.

"Me neither. It's my worst nightmare."

He clutched the offered glass tightly, to hide his shaking fingers.

"I think it's most people's worst nightmare."

The techs frowned down at their drinks.

Petrel fisted his shot and tossed it back.

"Why haven't you-" he drew his finger across his throat.

Well... ey seemed like a unit with a lot of  _potential_ , if they could rehab em. And if the casino ever came calling-

"If they ever come calling you'd be best off without any evidence of what's happened, here."

Maybe, maybe so. But they  _did_  get quite a few off-worlders like Petrel coming through, claiming to know their shit. Maybe they'd kind of hoped some wizard would show up someday. And most of the time, honestly, they just forgot about em. Out of sight, out of mind. But they swore they had  _never_  left em powered up like that again, never.

"So, what, you just wake em up when some rando like me shows up to  _experiment_  on em?!"

"No!"

"Thksssst!"

"No, it's not like that. Everyone's nice to em. Hell, ey's had more cleanings and oil baths than any  _working_  unit in here, and you know how much they love that. Probably thinks ey lives in a fucking spa."

Petrel doubted very much that Niner saw it that way.

 

He hadn't entirely lost the buzz from Raven's wine, and the spicy, herbal liqueur they were pouring seemed like it was probably a bad idea. Until he'd had a couple, and then it seemed like a _great_ idea.

[Poe Dameron hadn't been a teetotaler, exactly. He drank. Just not very much. Alcohol was fun at parties, because people admitted things that, for the most part, weren't _that_ embarrassing. And it made him less self-conscious about dancing, and he really liked dancing. So yeah, he drank. A little. Sometimes.]

This was the thing that he was starting to realize about alcohol: it seemed to make a  _lot_  of things seem like good ideas.

 

"I think what you guys need to ask yourselves, is, what would you want someone to do for  _you_ , if it was you?"

"Fuck, Pet, you don't aim to wound, do you?" Tank wrapped his arms around himself. "You know, some people say they don't really feel things the same way we do."

Odoli muttered something dismissive.

"Well, of course, we _treat_ them like they do, 'cause it would feel bad not to. I mean if you really  _think_  about it, though, do they?"

She responded with something pretty emphatic; which he translated as: lots of beings didn't feel things  _exactly the same way_  as others, but that didn't mean they didn't feel anything.

"If you start thinking that way," Petrel asked, "where do you stop? What about non-sentient animals? What if Force users went around saying that mute-ass punks like us were less deserving of kindness because we don't  _feel_  things the way they do?"

"Kindness, huh," Tank chuckled, and poured another round. "Well, speaking of the concept. You could have taken a cheap shot there, and you didn't."

"Cheap shot?"

Tank gestured down at his legs.

"Oh, shit, buddy, I wasn't-" He shook his head. He hadn't even been thinking of Tank as disabled, since he got around so well. Shit, he'd been seeing Niner as  _cognitively_ impaired, not even thinking about how ey was also  _physically_ impaired. No wonder the techs didn't want to put em down. And then he realized what he'd just done; he'd been trying to gently push them toward decommissioning Niner, but had actually, unintentionally, made a pretty good case for rehab.

Well, shit.

"Listen. If you guys are gonna do this, you need to commit to it. But you also need an exit strategy. You need to decide  _first_  what your objectives are, and have a rubric for attainability."

"Rubric?" Tank raised an eyebrow.

Shit, he was talking like a fucking flight instructor.

"Shit or get off the pot, is what I'm saying. And if you think the odds are," he drew his finger across his throat again, "then it's probably better to get it over with now."

Odoli admitted that she didn't know what the odds were. She and Tank expressed their ignorance to one another. Petrel soon lost the one-sided train of conversation. His eyes were so tired, and his head was so heavy, and spinning a little. Could every comet in the sector just descend now, please, so he could get some fucking water? He set his head down on the counter and stared into the utter horror of what Niner had experienced.

 ...

 

"Pet?" The tech was shaking his shoulder. "You drunk, buddy?"

"Yyyep."

"Where you staying?"

"I dunno. I shouldn'a drank so much. Not used to it. And the whole, fucking...  _water_  situation."

"Tell ya what. You can stay here, if you want. In back. You can stay with Niner. We're gonna sleep on it before we decide."

"Whadd're ya gonna lock me in, too? See if you can drive me crazy, too?"

" _We didn't do that._ And to be honest with you, dude? You already seem a little," Tank waggled his fingers next to his head.

He couldn't argue with that assessment.

 

They put a creeper mat down in the closet next to Niner. He remembered to put the quarter-flask of water he had left where he would see it when he woke up, and curled up with his satchel under his head.

 

 _I'll stay_ , Odoli volunteered.  _Go see your ladyfriend. Get the dirt on this guy._

 

* * *

 

Anyone with anything like a regular job was moving early, before sunrise, before the heat became oppressive. Tank picked up three breakfast dumplings and an extra liter of water for the guy Raven had described as a _poor thirsty calf in the trackless hills._

 

He opened the shop and dismounted from the armoured (and armed) carrier that had earned him the nickname _Tank._ Odoli had caf on already, so he went back to check on their guest.

Petrel was curled, forehead to fodplate with the C90, his hand wrapped around eir right front motivator. Like... like they were  _holding hands._

He hovered out and beckoned Odoli. When she saw them together, she clapped her hand over her mouth and turned away. She ran back out front, too late to keep a long, high-pitched squeal inside. Tank was right behind her, snorting; he had to brace himself to keep from falling off his stool as he collapsed in laughter.

"Oh, Force, Odi! It's too kriffing cute!"

_< "Stars, literally too cute! How has he not been eaten alive yet!">_

"I don't know. Raven wasn't kidding when she said he was a calf."

_< "What are we gonna do with him?">_

"I don't know. He seems to know his shit, though. Let's see if he can turn over some business. I don't mind watching out for him a little, as long as he makes it worth it."

 

Tank went back to wake Petrel.

"Hey, pal," he nudged him with his toe. "Morning's wasting. You wanna get any work in before noon, let's get going."

Petrel groaned and muttered something like  _yeah yeah, alright_. He sat up and looked at the droid.

"How you doing, buddy? Anything happen while I was out?"

No reply, of course.

"Well, thanks for watching my back while-" he yawned, "while I was sleeping."

"C'mon, Pet. Let's get some caf in you."

"Cool. Thanks. C'mon, Niner."

Tank shook his head at the futility of the invitation, but Petrel kneeled up and opened an access panel.

"Imma activate your repulsors, okay?"

He did, and then pushed himself up, stumbled, hopped a little and caught his balance. And then he guided Niner out to the shop with him.

"Wait here while I take a piss, okay bud?"

The two techs watched him retreat to the fresher, and turned to one another, wide-eyed. The guy, apparently, was bonkers.

 

When he came back, he sat and hummed over his mug of caf like nothing was wrong.

"Um. Petrel?"

"Yeah, boss?"

"Um." Tank nodded at the droid.

"Did ey do something?!"

"No, no, ey didn't. Just... why?" He motioned around the room.  _Why is ey here?_

"Oh. Well. I was thinking."

 

[What he'd been thinking about, when he woke in the middle of the night with the smell of lubricant very strong in his face, was the vet practice that served the little settlement on Yavin IV. They made calls to the Dameron farm, of course; it's not like you could drag a sick nerf in to a vet's office. But sometimes they just needed to run in and pick up some medication or nutrients or something. One such errand was the occasion for the very first time Poe had been trusted to take a speeder into town on his own. Kes wrote out the desired prescription, and stayed behind to comfort the sick animal.

Poe handed the note to the vet, heady with responsibility. While they fetched the medicine, he snuck a look around for Butter, the office tooka. When he was a  _child_ , waiting while his parents talked to the vet, he'd sat and waved and talked to the skittish cat. He spotted it on a shelf so high and so nearly empty that it had clearly been built for the cat and not to actually hold anything.  _Hi kitty_ , he whispered, twinkling his fingers at it.

He handed over the credit chip he'd been entrusted with, and listened carefully as the vet explained how to administer the medicine and when to comm if it didn't work- as if Kes didn't know. He strode out the door with a sense of purpose, but spared a second to wave goodbye to Butter,  _bye kitty_.

At some point in his teens, Butter had died and there was another office cat, Noober (aka New Butter.) When yet another (seriously, what was wrong with people?) was dumped there, he'd wanted to take it, but knew it wouldn't get along with the Dameron's barn cats any better than it did with Noober. But someone stepped up to take it, and that someone was the young village mechanic that Poe already had a crush on.

He was so attractive, and so smart, and kind, and just rebellious enough to let Poe fantasize that he might go out with a teenager, but principled enough that he knew it would never happen. Dev was already unfairly hot; adopting the tooka made him unbearable. Sometimes, when Poe fantasized about him, it  _hurt_. It was a tremendous relief when he realized the hurt came not just from wanting him, but from wanting to be  _like_ him. This was admiration at its most exquisite, touching and tugging in a way that his admiration for his parents never could.]

 

"What were you thinking?" Tank asked warily.

Petrel sighed.

"My mother is a terrible person. I haven't talked to her in years. But she does interesting work, or at least, she used to. She serviced imagers, scanners, that kind of thing. Some of her clients were veterinarians. She said they always had some kind of stray hanging around the front office."

The pair of techs nodded.

"Usually tookas, or sometimes birds. You know what I'm talking about- things so traumatized by abuse or neglect they're practically catatonic. People dump them on vets, and they just make a space for them. Sometimes, after a while, they get used to being around people, come out of their shell. Never gonna be a lap cat or play games, maybe, but they get comfortable."

The pair murmured and cooed; they'd known animals like that.

"That's sweet. Why do you say she was such a terrible person?"

"I asked her once if we could adopt a stray like that. She hit me and told me that weakness was a self-correcting flaw in nature. That compassion worked against that correction. That it was a contagion that needed to be stamped out, like a virus."

They blinked at him.

"Oh. Shit."

"K'kthssk'k."

"That's... that's fucked up, Pet."

"I know."

He stared down at the mug in his hands, giving the two space to exchange whatever Looks they needed to.

 

[He'd stolen that story from the brave, beautiful defector. They'd had a day and another night together, in a safehouse on Naboo, waiting for Poe's contact to come through with a transport. They spent the whole cycle talking, and it spun away far too fast. Finn didn't try again to change his mind, but he didn't lie, either. He was nervous, and he wished Poe were coming with him. Poe, however, had convinced himself Finn was better off without him, without being tainted by association with the  _treason_  and  _betrayal_  and shame that radiated off him like the blazing sunset that hung behind his eyes. Finn deserved to be seen in a better light.

But he did what he could to prepare him for Resistance culture: they went over the rights and responsibilities of soldiers, the concept of unlawful orders, the sanctity of consent. He mentioned the distinction between friendly teasing and the meaner sort, but Finn just chuckled bitterly. He knew all about that, he said.

He talked to Poe about his training as an FN, about his cadet training before that. Not in the technical, reporting manner the Resistance would expect from him, but heart to heart, buddy to buddy.

The philosophy Petrel had just appropriated belonged to a certain  _Captain Phasma_ , the closest thing to a mother Finn had known.]

 

"My point is," he told Niner, "you've spent a lot of time kinda trapped in your own core. I wonder if it might help to just, you know, hang out. No pressure; you don't have to do anything. Just get used to the sound of other voices for a while. Whaddya think?"

Nothing, of course.

Odoli made a long, apologetic statement. Tank translated that another drifter programmer had suggested the same thing, once, but the owner didn't want customers seeing a brick unit in the shop; it would be bad for business. But the owner... well... he didn't come around too often, these days.

Petrel took that to mean that he  _never_  came around, probably lived off-world, probably had accountants running a little constellation of similar businesses, possibly as fronts for something more lucrative. And from that, he inferred that the pair probably did a lot of business under the table, reporting just enough to justify their own pay deposits.

Either that, or the guy's body was slowly dissolving in one of the solvent cycling tanks out back.

Tank poured himself some more caf, and then poured a little liquor into it. He hovered back against the wall, tilted back on his stool and mused aloud. Much like vets' practices, most shops like this had some kind of critter slinking around. Not always the friendliest things, and sometimes troublemakers, but at least they kept the vermin down. He'd always thought it weird that there wasn't one here, but it wasn't like you could go out and  _get_  one. They kind of had to come to you.

Niner probably wouldn't be much help with vermin, but... it might be nice, when he was alone in the shop, to feel like he wasn't talking to himself. Plus, he'd have someone to bitch to about Odoli when she was in a  _mood_.

Odoli muttered something that made him smile, and then she held up her mug,  _let's do it_. The three of them clinked their mugs in agreement.

 

They agreed that Niner should split eir time between the front, where ey could absorb some normal social conversation, and the workshop in back, where Petrel would be spending most of his time, at least at first. His heart skipped as he realized that this was a backhanded way of telling him that he'd been hired.

Holy shit, he had a _job_.

Maybe he wasn't meant to die, just yet.

Maybe he'd have a while to be a  _free being_.

...

 

He was happy to take on the menial work of cleaning and lubricating parts. There was something deeply gratifying about feeling like the wash station was  _his_  work space.

[Poe had felt awkward, at first, about servicing Bee when they were stationed on Mirrin. The wash station was decked with graffiti he didn't get, and the tools were arranged such that they clearly "belonged" to certain people, rather than being for the accessibility of all. If he went on an up shift, he felt like he was getting in the way; if he went on a down shift, he felt like he was trespassing. Of course it didn't take long to make friends with some of the techs, and to be assured that he was welcome there, but he always felt like an intruder.]

He chatted at Niner about the layers of rust and grime on the parts, speculated about where the unit being serviced might have been, which tools he should use, the optimal sheen to leave on various surfaces. He imagined how he would lay out the station if he were hired permanently.

It was bliss, really.

 

* * *

 

He was busy until "lunch." Lunch was the three-ish hours in the middle of the afternoon when the suns were at their most oppressive, and no one moved outside unless they had to. Most people napped in their shops or homes, or took refuge in the cantina/brothels that currently occupied the thick-walled structures built as hostels for off-world guests.

Tank was going to stay and take a nap- he  _didn't get much sleep last night_ , he winked. Odoli was going to meet some friends at a tea room.  _Tea room_ , Petrel asked? What was that slang for? She laughed. The same thing it meant on any other planet, she promised. Tea was served there, along with alcohol. Tea rooms were kind of like bars for people who weren't looking for anything. There was a code that you didn't solicit people in tea rooms.

That sounded nice, he said. But the thought of introducing himself again to a bunch of her friends sounded exhausting. Maybe tomorrow.

He didn't say that a little compass in his brain was still oriented toward the Palace Room.

"I'll find someplace. Gotta find my own way around, right?"

 

* * *

 


	4. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lol you thought I was kidding about the blaster, didn't you?
> 
> CW for highly irresponsible and ludicrously over-the-top roleplay.

* * *

 

 

Petrel was just going to satisfy his curiosity. Curiosity could eat you up, make you do reckless things. He knew all about that. He was just going to see what it was like. The Palace Room was probably much more banal than advertised.

He definitely, _definitely_ , wasn't going there to look for a job. He had a job. His first one ever, and he liked it. Granted, it had only been a few hours, but he liked it. He liked Tank and Odi, and they'd been unreasonably nice to him, and he wasn't going to walk out on them. And he for sure wasn't going to walk out on Niner.

If they'd taken his advice about objectives and deadlines, they hadn't told him. He was pretty sure they hadn't. But he had a deadline in mind already. He'd decommission Niner himself, if he had to. And then he'd _have_ to leave. So. It was always good to have a contingency plan.

He walked past the doors the first time. _It's probably really cheezy in there_ , he thought, walking around the building. The far side was blasted by unfiltered sunlight that reflected back off the thick sandstone walls. Knowing that it was easily ten degrees cooler inside helped to make up his mind.

He made it back around to the front, eyes on the ground, he was definitely _not_ going to walk through those doors, prostrate himself, and promise to work for free, or at least in exchange for room and board and water. He _had_ a job. (The terms of which had not been discussed, he realized. Considering how capitalistic this place was, room and board and water might actually be asking a lot.)

A flexiplast-clad robotic eye shot out of a peephole, a replica of the palace guard in the _Trilogy_. It scanned him briefly.

 _Ah_ , _a distinguished guest,_ a speaker hissed, _deserving of every indulgence the Palace has to offer. Enter, honored guest._ The speaker rumbled as the doors slid open smoothly.

Yeah, this place was cheezy.

 

A short, angled hallway led into the cantina. Predictably, there were dancing girls swaying to sultry music, on a low stage surrounded by tables. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see that there was some sort of _authentic Huttslave_ activity going on at some of the tables. He made straight for the bar, turning his back on the scene. He ordered a limon fizz, the least alcoholic thing he could think of off the top of his head.

There were two men talking loudly next to him, commenting on the dancers-

_Don't listen. Don't listen._

But it was hard not to listen when they were so fucking loud. He turned back, to survey the scene, to observe how the "slaves" doted on their "masters." There was a lap dance in progress, someone rubbing a guy's shoulders, someone polishing a helmet with a cloth. Pretty innocent stuff, at least out here in the public space. And at least the crowd was a little more diverse than where Raven worked; there were a few women among the customers. He spotted one guy among the slaves, kneeling between a couple and handing them peeled slices of fruit. And _oh_ , there was someone crouched with a guy's boots resting on her shoulders, _oh,_ he kind of had a thing for boots.

[Marlen had done that for him, sat "studying" with his boots up on his back. Poe knew he wasn't really studying, couldn't concentrate on anything but how horny he was, but he was so disciplined, patient enough to let Poe believe he'd forgotten he was there, enough for him to cease being anything but the hot bundle of need in his pants, enough for his head to dissolve right into the space between the atoms in the floor, through it and out into the space where stars were born and died, out, out, out.]

Honestly, if not for the ostentatious salon, and the fact that there was money involved, the scene wouldn't be all that different on the surface than an average Dress Right Restnight at Beeva's.

But there _was_ money involved here, and it tainted the whole scene with something icky, something that even made him feel guilty about those happy youthful memories.

 

The maitre d' timed his approach perfectly, just as Petrel finished his fizz and while the bartender was nowhere near.

He was elegantly dressed and handsome for his age. Petrel wondered if he was a worker who'd worked his way up, or just a natural born salesman. He bestowed glowing honorifics as he slipped his hand under his elbow and gently guided him away from the bar.

"Oh, no, I'm just here to drink- just here for lunch."

Of course, the man cooed, of course, his every desire was their command, but it was the natural duty- nay, the _privilege_ \- of their slaves to serve him.

Really? Was he being an asshole if he just wanted to drink? There were other people just drinking, including the two jagoffs, their voices receding as the man led him away. Maybe he just looked like someone who wouldn't say _no_.

 

He was such a young and handsome master, the man continued, and _clearly_ a benevolent one. Whoever he chose would lucky to serve him. He led him into a curving hallway, lined with cages. Half of them were empty, half of them held human and humanoid women in various costumes, some skimpy, some modest. A couple of them hardly looked at him. One came right up and writhed against the bars, begging to be chosen. Another cowered away. He knew it was an act, but the fact that it might be appealing to anyone was- _ugh_.

He wondered if they played the same roles all the time, or rotated through them. If they chose them, or if they were assigned.

So, the maitre d' asked as he gestured around, oil oozing from his voice. Did he see anything he liked?

"Um. Do you have any, uh, guys?"

"Of course!" The man's eyes lit up, and he spoke into a comm. "Our honored guest requires a slaveboy for his pleasure!"

While they waited, the man gushed on about their boys' training and talent and obedience. A door opened, and three figures emerged. One was tall, handsome, and well-coiffed; he swayed forward with his chin held high. He wore a silver collar and a long, loose skirt. He looked Petrel over with a smirk that told him he had _no idea_ how lucky he was about to get.

The other "boy" was also handsome, but he wore a leather collar and only a simple scarf wrapped around his waist. His wrists were shackled, and the third figure, a handler, shoved him reluctantly through the door.

The maitre d' fawned over the first boy, _Slaveboy Two will answer to whatever his master cares to call him._ He lifted his skirts and Two turned, showing off his legs and ass. He had a really nice body; Petrel could see why he was so proud of it. But he wasn't sure he could handle that kind of arrogance right now.

He turned to the other guy. Slaveboy Three was very talented, the host assured him, but he was recently acquired and hadn't entirely come to terms with his new condition. He required a kind but _firm_ hand. Petrel nodded.

"Okay."

That sounded dumb. What was he supposed to say? _I'll take him?_

Two huffed out a disgusted little _tch_ , seemingly slighted. The host explained that if Three proved too recalcitrant for the young master, a trainer could be sent to his room. For a reasonable fee, of course.

"Okay."

The maitre d' clapped his hands. "Have the boy made ready and brought to his master's chamber!" The handler dragged him away. Two turned on his heel with another disgusted sniff and followed, sashaying away, making sure Petrel got a good look at what he'd passed up.

 

There were just a few details they had to go over, the man said, pulling out a datapad. The details turned out to be a contract written in the form of a manifesto on _noblesse oblige_ , the responsibilities incumbent upon masters to ensure the safety and security of their inferiors, and the virtues of magnanimity and forbearance. Under all the flowery bullshit was a fairly common-sense list of dos and don'ts. At the end was a block of large red text, informing the reader that Tatooine, as a signatory planet of the New Republic, was subject to all laws and statutes of the Galactic Criminal Code, including those pertaining to assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, theft, unlawful imprisonment, etc, and that violators would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. By signing, he agreed that the establishment, its owners and employees held no liability for any loss, theft, or injury he might suffer on the premises.

He also transferred an eye-popping deposit. More than Poe would have been able to pony up, that was for sure. Not that he would have.

The maitre d' handed him a keychip to a room on the third floor. Petrel raised an eyebrow. Third floor? The place was bigger than he thought. Oh, yes, the man assured him, _very_ popular with off-world guests, a must-see stop on any first visit to Tatooine.

 

* * *

 

The guy was gorgeous, and that was welcome, for a change. But Three didn't like the look in his eyes. _Super_ depressed. Maybe not quite dead inside, maybe half-dead. A red flag in the back of his mind said _suicidal_. Not that it was his business, but people like that were sometimes careless with other people's safety, too.

Most everyone who came in was an asshole in one way or another. And most of them were rubes, too, so tickled by the novelty of the place, so intimidated by his unquestioning obedience, that they didn't even ask for anything too gross or painful. They took giddy delight in demanding the most mundane of humiliations. This place was kitschy as fuck, and the real sadists knew it; they'd be embarrassed to come here. They had their own places.

When the super-depressed trick keyed the door a low chime sounded, giving him a brief delay to get in place. He knelt at the foot of the bed and clicked the magnetic cuffs together in his lap. He stared down at the floor, aiming for _sullen_.

The guy stood there for a long time after the door closed, because of course he did. He hung his jacket and stared some more. He pulled off his boots, palming a vibroblade as he did.

[Three hadn't been here long, himself. He'd been working a shitty little dive in the mid-rim when someone told him how good the credits were here, for someone with his flair for drama. They were right, the money was very good. Of course, it was expensive just to fucking live here, but he was still what he considered _ahead_. That previous gig had had a very strict _no weapons_ policy, and he'd assumed that was the norm. He'd been appalled to find that it wasn't the case, here. _This is Mos Eisley, kiddo_ , the girls had laughed. Any place that required their customers to check their weapons would quickly find themselves without customers.]

"Catch."

He looked up to see the guy lob the blade at him, in a gentle underhand. Instinctively, he reached up to grab it, and felt the cuffs slide apart as he did.

_Shit._

He snapped them back together, clutching the blade in his lap. He snuck a look at the guy, to see if he was pissed. But no, he was grinning, and not even in a maniacal way. It was a good look on him. A nice smile, really. For a sketchball.

The guy pulled out a blaster, a sweet little thing, _damn_. His fingers curled toward the panic buttons on his cuffs. But the guy held it by the muzzle, popped the charge release, and tossed the charge across the room.

_The fuck?_

He stepped closer, slowly, knees bent, non-threatening. He held out the blaster. Three looked up; the smile was gone.

"Master. What would you have me do?"

"Take it."

He did, and the guy backed away, palms out.

"What would you have me do with this, Master?"

"Make me."

 

_Oh, fuck my life right now._

 

[The role-reversal thing wasn't all that uncommon, here, although this was a bit much. And they usually went for the girls- they usually went for Eleven, in particular. Even in the most demure roles, they picked her out. She was thinking about going pro, moving to the Core and making cleaner money. They also tended to be particular; Eleven had literally been handed scripts.]

His slid the cuffs apart, stood, and leveled the empty blaster at the guy. He curled his lip in a nasty little sneer.

"Take your fucking clothes off."

For a moment, the guy looked almost scared. Who knew what was going on in his head? But he didn't protest. Three pointed at the bed, where the guy should put his clothes. When he was down to his drawers, he looked up unhappily.

What did that mean? Was that genuine preference, or a signal that Three should _make him_ take them off? It would help if the guy would fucking _talk_ to him. But he wasn't much of a talker, it seemed. He decided to leave them, for now.

"Turn around. Let me see what I've got, here."

The guy slowly turned around, showing his body.

_Seriously, fuck my life._

The guy was obviously a hardcore pain enthusiast. It wasn't the wildest body art he'd ever seen, but then, he wasn't usually in possession of a knife and a single, unsettlingly vague instruction. If the guy was expecting him to add to that with the blade- no. No, that wasn't on the menu.

He pointed the gun at the floor.

The guy knelt, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders, his eyelids dipped, his eyes glassed over a little.

Okay.

Three thought he saw what was going on. He was looking for a ticket _all_ the way down.

Okay.

He could probably do that. He could _definitely_ do it if he'd had a heads-up and a chance to talk to Eleven. He thought about it, thought about pornos that looked like this. He flexed one forearm, showing off the heavy-looking manacle. The guy's eyes followed it.

Okay.

Well. He still had the panic button on his collar. And a code word he could yell at the sensors, which probably worked? He'd never had to do it, but he'd never heard of it  _not_ working.

_Fine. Fucko._

He twisted the cuffs off and tossed them at the guy's knees. He gestured with the gun, _you know what to do_. The guy snapped them onto his wrists and then looked up at Three, as if he were pleading, _do I have to_?

_I don't know, jackass, do you?_

The guy thought about it for a minute and decided that he did. He clicked the cuffs together and hung his head.

"That's right, good boy," Three rewarded him, in the same soothing, syrupy voice some people used on him, the one they'd picked up from porn. He backed away, putting a corner of the bed between them.

"Eyes closed, if you know what's good for you."

He considered the weapons. The blaster was empty, but still a blunt object. The blade, though- he switched it on; it was still deadly. It was in his hand, at the moment, but the guy... the guy was only about his height, but he was solid. Broad shoulders, broad hips, broad fists. High arches, probably more agile than he looked. Three was pretty sure the guy could take him. And whatever his mindset was, he looked like he could become pretty reckless pretty easily. Three hid the blade under the mattress.

He unwrapped his waistcloth and stepped into the guy's trousers, pulled the belt snug. He went through the pockets; they were empty save for two credit sticks in the right-hand pocket, apparently left there intentionally. He stepped closer to the guy, still kneeling downcast. He leveled the blaster again.

"Do you understand what's happening, here?"

The guy looked up, misery on his face.

"I have your clothes. I have your weapons. I have your money." He held up the credit sticks- a pair of hundreds, _nice_. That was a hell of a tip. He suddenly felt a whole lot better about the guy.

"I'm going to walk out of here a free man. And since you've given me so much, I suppose I should give you something, too." He ran his palm over his stim-enhanced erection.

The guy swallowed. There was a tiny nod of assent, and then he hung his head, his shoulders slumped; he looked every bit as defeated as if the blaster were charged. Three circled around him, looking him over again. Those scars, fuck. They were impressive. Some of the guests here would fucking cream their shorts at the sight of that.

_Oh._

_Is that your deal?_

_Is that why you're here?_

"Tell me," he tried, "why did you run away?"

The guy inhaled, suddenly tense. _Too close, okay_. He ran his fingers soothingly over the guy's hair.

"Or maybe a better question- why did you come back?"

The guy relaxed again. Okay, now he was on to something. He curled his fingers a little deeper into _nice, really nice_ hair, and trailed the blaster up his spine. He planted the muzzle at the base of his skull.

"Why did you come back?"

"I don't know," he whispered.

"I think you do. I think you belong here. And I think you know it. _Slave_."

The guy took in a stuttering breath and relaxed again, _there we go, mister, nice and calm_. Okay, Three was onto him, now. He ran his fingertips over the scars. They were smooth, professional.

"You've been punished so many times. And yet you haven't learned."

"I'm sorry."

"Were you afraid of it? Or was it not enough?"

"I don't know," he whispered again.

Whatever punishment the guy wanted was _not_ going to involve the vibroblade; he wasn't going to give him the chance to ask.

"We're gonna try something different, this time." 

He touched the guy's cheekbone; kriff, he was good-looking. Smoothed his hand across the guy's cheek, felt it out, felt out the sweet spot for nice sharp slap. Stared down at him until his eyes lifted to offer a flicker of consent.

He gave him about half the slap he wanted to; the guy looked almost annoyed. So he gave it to him good and hard, and watched his head roll, watched him blink to recover, turn back for another. Gave him another, and paused before the backhand for eye contact. It was there, even glassier than before, but with that minuscule little nod, so Three let him have it. Fore and back, fore and back, the guy took it, rolling with the follow-through and lolling back to offer up the perfect angle again and again. It was fucking _satisfying_.

He stopped before he could leave a mark, at least he hoped so. He stepped back, and leveled the blaster again. He waited for the guy to stop spinning, to try to focus on him. He touched the buckle of the belt, and waited to see where the guy's eyes would land. On the belt, or on his fly? Was he ready for Three to _make him_ , yet, or did he need more punishment first?

He finally focused on Three's hand, skimmed over the sight of his trousers on Three's body. His eyes wandered to the blaster.

_That's right, motherfucker. You're lucky I'm giving you a choice._

But he lingered on the weapon. Tilted his head, frowned, there were little movements in his brow like he was talking to the thing. He licked his lips and parted them-

_Oh, you have got to be kidding me._

But kriff, it was a beautiful object. Sleek bodied, full of expensive, high-tech forced-air cooling, probably ran the charge down pretty fast, but there were no sharp edges for the guy to cut himself on if he really wanted to-

He pressed the muzzle to the guy's neck; he looked up, heartbroken. Drew it up his throat and pressed it under his chin, and he looked hopeful. Along the underside of his jaw, and back down his flushed cheek, just under the corner of his mouth, and he looked almost joyous. The guy was expressive, he had to give him that. Hell, _he_ should be working here.

Three dragged the muzzle across the guy's lower lip, and he opened to it, leaned forward. No, he wasn't imagining it; this was what the guy wanted.

He rested it on the guy's lip, and watched his tongue reach out and swirl over it, fall back beneath it, coax it forward, just like a dick. He held it loosely, let him have it, and watched his lips stretch forward and close around the barrel, tug it in.

Three forgot all about how fucked up this was, watching. The gun was so pretty, and the guy was so handsome, and there was nothing violent about the way he took it, slow and tender, like he was in love with it or something. When he got up to Three's finger on the trigger guard, he blinked up at him, _sorry, man, excuse us._ He tilted his head to the side to try to encompass the trigger guard, and promptly gagged. Three withdrew the gun.

"It's okay," he said softly. "Let me help."

He pulled the guy's head back by the hair, straightening his throat. The guy blinked up at him through freshly dewy eyelashes. Three gave it back, and he sucked the barrel in, until Three felt his tongue moving over his finger, roving across the weapon and back to his finger again, sliding along where it pressed against the trigger guard, like he was trying to lick them apart, like Three was the interloper, here.

Maybe it was fucked up, but it was really doing things for him. He was fucking feeling it. And the guy was going at it, almost passionately, like he thought he might really get something out of it. Three let him have it and watched, enthralled, until the guy uttered a sad little groan of frustration.

He withdrew the gun gently.

"Suck it clean," he ordered, and the guy did, squeeging away his saliva with his lips.

"I would love to let this beautiful thing come down your throat, slave, but I'm kind of counting on the reward I'm gonna get for turning you in alive. Got something else for you, though." He reached in through the open fly and pulled it out.

"Get on it," he prodded with the muzzle.

The guy obeyed, but with approximately half the enthusiasm he'd had for the blaster.

"Like you mean it," he growled, shoving the muzzle harder against the guy's neck. He sucked a little harder, but there was no _passion_ , there. Three prodded harder; at this point, he didn't care if it bruised.

"Show me that you're worth more alive than dead."

 _That_ worked for the guy, he tilted his head and _ah_ , there it was, tight, tingling, his tongue sweeping over tingling nerves, satisfying for too-brief seconds and leaving need in its wake, why couldn't that tongue just be big enough to wrap around his cock and-

"That's right, suck it," he whispered, harshly. Curled tighter in the guy's hair: a sharp inhale, a needy moan, of course he liked it, that haircut was made for it. And if he liked that, he probably liked- kriff, no one ever asked _him_ before just making their dick at home, did they?

"Take a breath."

The guy's nostrils flared as he obediently took in a lungful of air, which was a pretty clear _yes_ , so he gave it to him, fucked him, fucked him deep,  _oh_ , it felt so good, so wet and tight, and so beautiful, too, the tears streaming down the guy's reddened cheeks.

"That's right, take it," he rasped, kriff, how was it that those noises sounded so awkward in his own mouth and so _sweet_ in someone else's? Three pulled back to let him breathe and suck up some of the drool spilling out of his mouth. He gave him a couple of seconds and prodded again.

"Don't stop. Suck it," and the guy did; he was so good, so good. "Yeah, someone's missing _you_ , aren't they? You gonna bring a fat reward, that's it, suck it, bitch-"

The guy pulled off violently and snarled up at him.

_What?_

His teeth were bared; there was danger in his eyes. Three put his hands up, placating. He was pretty sure this was genuine. He wasn't sure what to do. He hadn't done anything sudden, he'd actually backed off, and all he'd said was... wait, seriously? This was like one of the most fucked-up scenes Three had ever been a part of, and the guy had a problem with one of the most common words in Basic? Seriously?

Should he apologize, and try to pick up again? Ask the guy if he wanted to talk about it? That was probably the right answer. Or try to work it in, somehow?

"Is this... something we need to talk about?"

The guy snarled a little less rabidly into a corner of the room. His eyes were dull, turned inward, like he was more angry with himself than with Three. He clearly had no inclination to talk about it.

He tucked his cock back in; this had obviously gone in a different direction. _Work it in_ , was where this was going. He wasn't going to provoke the guy again; he crossed every epithet but _slave_ off the list. But he didn't think he should just let it go, either. He opened tentatively,

"I see someone has trained you well not to speak."

The guy nodded, ever so slightly, and then kept nodding, his head bobbling on his neck like a seedpod about to burst.

"It's too bad they didn't train you better to _listen_."

The guy kept nodding.

"Your name, slave, is whatever I feel like calling you."

Three loosened the belt, slowly, making sure the guy saw what he was doing. He eased it out and held it in a loop, a makeshift whip. He waited until the guy's eyes acknowledged it.

"Stand up."

The guy hunched, scowling anew.

"I said stand up, _slave_."

He did, and when Three pointed to the bed he went to it, stood at the end. He planted his feet shoulder-width apart, his knees relaxed and braced against the bed.

"Your name. Is whatever. I call you. Understand?"

Another ugly look.

" _Understand_?"

"No."

Three brought the belt down across his back. There was a sharp, satisfying crack, but only a little smirk from the guy.

 _Fuck_.

He jammed the blaster into the guy's side.

"Drop your fucking shorts."

He did, and _holy shit_ , the guy's hips were messes of purple and blue and yellow. Was that from something like _this_? He looked at the belt. It didn't seem capable of that kind of damage. He avoided the bruises as he cracked the belt across the guy's ass. Again, it was very loud, but the guy hardly flinched.

 _Fuck_.

He swung again and again, tinging golden flesh with pink, and growing frustrated with the trick, who was _clearly_ on some kind of pain stims. He even jutted out his hip, asking for lashes over the deep bruises, and groaned low and horny when he got them.

After a dozen or so lashes he turned to Three with a hint of a smile.

"Permission to speak, _Master._ " There was a hint of sarcasm there, but also an endearing sense of something like mischief.

"Speak, slave."

"The buckle comes off," he winked, with a little more of the smile. It was _nice_ , why couldn't he just be a nice, normal asshole, why couldn't he share more of that cute smile?

There was a row of durasteel teeth biting into the leather, and a lever that opened the jaw. He put the contraption aside and considered the length of leather. He didn't think he could aim something that long. The guy ran his eyes over it until Three figured out that if he held it by the middle, he had two straps of manageable length.

He sliced it across the guy's back, and he jumped and cried out, as much in surprise as in pain. That was more like it. At this point, it was a very pleasant sound to Three's ears.

[Later, talking to Eleven about it, he would learn that he should have warmed the guy up, maybe whipping him with his shirt or something. That's why the guy had let him fuck around for so long before saying anything. Good to know, he said, although he wasn't exactly excited about the idea of ever using this knowledge.]

The guy made beautiful noises while Three worked over his back and ass and thighs. And Three, for his part, might have put a little more into it than was strictly professional. He was annoyed. Cute smile or not, the guy had been teasing him for not knowing what he was doing.

_Whose fault is that, asshole? Maybe if you'd just fucking tell me what you want. Maybe if you'd just fucking talk._

And speaking of teasing, that blow job had just been getting started when the guy flipped out over _literally one of the top ten words_ in Three's vocabulary. And if anyone fit the description, this fucking guy-

_Come in here with your dead eyes and stick a fucking blaster in my hands. You know what that does to a person? It scares the hell out of them, that's what it does._

It was lovely, though, to watch gold turn to pink and pink to red, to watch a shimmer of sweat become a shine. And those noises, kriff. Soft, high-pitched, not quite sobbing. Three didn't mind _those_.

[What he wouldn't admit to Eleven was how lost in it he'd gotten.]

The guy was getting wobbly, now, his knees braced hard against the bed. His head hung loose on swaying shoulders; the noises sounded more hopeless.

One of his feet slipped, and he nearly crashed against the bed. The cuffs came apart as he caught himself, locking his elbows. _Stand up_ , Three ordered, but he just panted down at his splayed palms. _Stand up, slave_ , and he inhaled, and rocked a little, and appeared to be making an honest effort to gather momentum.

"If you can't stand up, then get in the bed. Unless you want me to fuck you on this filthy fucking floor."

The guy's response was to collapse onto his knees, clinging to the mattress.

_Great._

Three moved into his line of sight; he was blinking slowly at something far off just over his bicep. He pushed the guy's wrists together again and got an approving little grunt when the cuffs snapped into place. He pushed open the drawer next to the bed and selected a condom in his size. He held it up where the guy could see it, if he was seeing anything. He crinkled the wrapper loudly.

More blinking.

His hands weren't exactly shaking as he rolled it on, just a little less coordinated than usual. The stims were the only thing keeping him hard. He kicked the guy's legs a little further apart and knelt behind him. _Kriff_ , he had a nice ass.

He stroked a slicked hand over his cock and tried to think about how nice that ass would look in a normal situation. Maybe the guy would be in this same position, but he'd be smiling over his shoulder, with those teeth, telling him how he wanted it, telling him _that_ he wanted it, fuck...

He pushed the guy's shoulder into the mattress- his skin was on fire. Pulled his hips back, _c'mon, make it easy on yourself, here._ Pushed his knees apart, _there we go_ , pressed up against his hole, and got the softest little whine in response. He let it sit there, let the guy think about the threat he was presenting. From the sound of his soft little breaths, he was savoring it.

He pushed harder, the guy clenched, another whine. He pulled his cuffed hands up over his head, burying his head between his arms.

_What you whining about, bitch, you said to make you. Don't you even think about fighting me on this unless you really wanna get your ass kicked._

He pulled the gun out of his pocket and stuck it in the guy's ribs. A gasp of recognition, okay, the guy liked his gun. Okay. He shoved it harder.

"You can whine all you want," and he left off the word that belonged at the end of that sentence. "But this what you're here for."

The whine descended into something low and mournful.

"Go on, take it, slave. Show me what you're good for." Three pushed in, painstakingly slow. He had no intention of injuring the guy, but he wasn't making it easy. He only had two fucking hands. He had to wrap one arm around his hips, holding the blaster at an awkward, ineffectual angle, and hold him down with his head against his neck. The guy keened in pain- discomfort?- until Three was finally in deep enough to let go of his own dick and clamp down on the guy's hip, on one of those bruises he liked so much. That, at least, got something that sounded halfway like pleasure.

He dug his fingers into it and jerked the guy's hip roughly and grunted, offering the impression of something much more violent than his patient descent into the guy's body. When he finally bottomed out, he was breathing just as hard as the guy was. He took a minute, as much for himself as for the guy. His eyes played over his red, sweat-slick back. Between the scars he'd walked in with and the welts Three had left, he was a right fucking mess.

 

He had to admit there was something appealing about leaving marks on the trick, something he'd remember him by, something he'd still be feeling hours later. He picked a spot that looked like it might bruise and jammed the blaster muzzle into it. The guy flinched and pressed his elbows tighter around his head; he moaned low into his arm.

Was it just the pain, or was it the gun itself? The guy clearly had feelings for it. And some part of him- he hated to admit it, but it was true- he kind of wanted to see the guy suck it again. And it would probably get the guy off, get this over with, get him out of here.

He shoved him forward, upright against the bed, ignoring a half-swallowed yelp at the sudden change in angle. He pushed the guy's hands away and pulled his head up by sweat-damp hair, and pushed the gun into his mouth again.

"Take it, slave," he gritted into the guy's ear, and moved his hips, fucked him, fucked him like he wanted it. He heard the guy's teeth clatter against the blaster, and inelegant little noises that were as much from awkwardness as from pain.

"Suck it. I know you want it. Suck it good or I'll blow your brains out with it."

He couldn't take it like he had before, because he was half-conscious and being jostled by getting fucked, and he made apologetic little whimpers around the thing, probably devoting the remains of his coordination to avoiding a chipped tooth.

 

Later, Three would realize that the filth he spewed at the guy had come from his own feelings about working here. Yes, it was kitschy, and most people had no idea what to do with him, and no one had ever hurt him, but. They did like to humiliate him, and the whole premise of the place was fucking disturbing.

_You'll take it, slave, and no one cares if you like it. No one cares if it hurts. I'll do what I like with you. And if what I like is blasting your fucking brains out and fucking what's left of you, I'll fucking do it, and I'll fucking get off on it. I'll forget you ever existed and tomorrow I'll get myself a new hole to fuck._

That last one was what put the guy over the edge. He felt him shuddering and pulled the gun away just in time, just as the guy lost the last ounce of control; there was the unmistakable buck of his hips as he came. Sweaty hair slipped though his fingers as the guy collapsed.

Three wasn't far behind. He'd put the condom on in anticipation of having to fake it, but it was pretty real right now. He put the gun back in his pocket, wrapped his arm around the guy's shoulders, and pushed his face into his sweaty curls, tried to picture him another way. He didn't want to come with those ugly words still on his tongue.

He imagined the guy taking his load and grinning up at him, licking his lips... smiling over his shoulder and telling him how much he wanted it... winking at him to flirt, not to mock... Even from the beginning, when he'd seen the cuffs for the props they were- what if he'd held out his hand, pulled Three to his feet with that mischievous smile... told him his name, talked to him... if that smile had been _for_ him instead of at him...

It was light for only a fleeting second as he came, and then he ached. He pressed his mouth to the guy's neck, tasted sweat, closed his lips on his skin.

...

 

He wasn't sure what to do with the guy, once he'd cleaned up. He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, that was obvious. He supposed he could just sit and watch him and get paid the whole time. Or maybe take a nap, even- but he didn't trust him. Didn't trust him at all. Wasn't gonna close his eyes, cuffs or no. Actually, he kind of wanted to get out of here. Maybe he could stash his collar under the mattress, go get a fucking drink, come back and check on him. Maybe Eleven would be down there; maybe she could tell him if this was normal.

One way or another, he decided, he was going to get paid. He unlatched his collar and stuck it under the mattress.

"Hey," he said gently. "Hey, slave." He shook the guy's shoulder.

"Nnnnh?"

"Get up. Get in the bed."

"Nnnnh."

"Yes. Need you to get some rest. I want you looking good when I turn you in. Get in the fucking bed."

The guy took a few deep breaths, mustering his strength for the monumental task. He finally clambered clumsily up onto the bed and collapsed again. The cuffs came apart again, but that was okay. Three pulled each arm out wide and snapped it onto the bedframe with a heavy clank.

The guy's eyelids twitched a little at the sound, but his breath was regular, if a little shallow. A damp spot of drool was already evident where his lips crushed against the sheet. They were still red, but his face had lost its flush, and the sweat had done very nice things to his hair.

Three tied his scarf over the guy's eyes; there was no objection.

He folded the guy's clothes on the chair, and laid his belt and weapons on top. He went to an inconspicuous cabinet by the door. It looked like a maintenance box, but it was stocked with spare robes. It was there because one of the guests' favorite ways to "punish" their slaves was to steal their clothes. The ones that did were unfailingly smug about coming up with such a clever idea. It was fucking rude, but considering what they were charged for these souvenirs, it was hardly discouraged.

Three wrapped himself in a dark patterned robe, far more modest than what he'd walked up in.

"So, slave," he told the blindfolded, marginally conscious trick, "I've got your clothes, I've got your weapons, I've got your money. I'm going to walk out that door, and I'm sure as hell not going to be stupid enough to look back."

The guy kept breathing.

"But I guess I owe you. So I'm gonna do you a favor. I'm gonna give you a chance. I'm not gonna turn you in."

Sharp inhale, was that a frown?

"I want you to count back from a hundred, real slow. _Real slow_ , understand?"

There was a raspy exhale, almost annoyed sounding.

"When you get to the bottom, you think about what you want. Maybe if you're lucky, you can escape again."

The tiniest, saddest whimper, maybe a protest.

"But I have a feeling you know exactly where you belong."

Breathing, soft and regular.

...

 

He made his way down a back stairwell to the dressing room and made straight for the liquor cabinet.

"That was fast."

"Fast as I could make it."

He poured himself a shot.

"Really? He looked nice enough. Kinda sad, maybe."

"He was pretty," someone added.

"Yeah, pretty fucking nuts."

"He tip you at least?"

"Yeah," Three grinned. "Yeah he did."

 

* * *

 

Petrel slept straight through lunch. And if there was a moment when he woke up, when he missed the smell of machine grease and plasma-cut steel and Poe's special blend of tea steeping, he shook it off. He was here, now, and he felt great.

He felt great, but his bill was shocking. He was pretty sure it was the most expensive nap in the recorded history of civilization. At least it came with a much-needed flask of water- not complimentary, but a gift, from "Slavegirl Eleven." She was very sorry to have missed him, her note said. She hoped he would ask for her if he came back. She included an address he could comm to make an appointment or to request anything he didn't feel like talking about in person.

He put the note in his pocket.

He didn't think he wanted to go back there again, but he was glad to have the note. It made him feel safe, every bit as much as the blaster.

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn't like he slunk back in like an alley cat. He was perfectly casual, more relaxed than he'd been before lunch. Maybe that's what gave him away.

"Where'd _you_ go for lunch?" Tank grinned, looking absolutely delighted.

"Um."

"You got laid, didn't you?"

Petrel was pretty sure you didn't call it _getting laid_ if you paid for it. But he bit his tongue, because he wasn't sure yet just how Tank and Raven's relationship worked.

"I, uh. Wanted to take in some of the local culture. And, uh, history."

" _History_? You go to a cathouse or a museum?"

Odoli got it. She laughed long and loud before she managed to squack something out.

"You didn't!" Tank gogged.

He nodded sheepishly.

"The Palace Room? Doesn't seem like your speed, man."

"Someone told me it was a must-see destination. You know, since I've never been here before." He winced and scratched his head, one of his most glaring tells, to anyone that knew him. He wasn't getting out of this, so he played up his embarrassment, hoping they'd be merciful.

"So you saw it. You like it?"

"I'm, uh, not sure?"

They laughed.

"Have you guys been there?"

Tank had gone a few times, just to drink and listen to music and watch the dancers. They got some really good dancers in there, he said.

Odoli had been once, also just to drink and watch. But it was mostly humans in there, not her scene. Not that she had anything against humans, she assured them.

"So you going back?"

"I don't think so?"

He didn't think so. Not as a customer, anyway. Probably not for a job, either. But the note glowed warm and comforting in his pocket.

"Hey, Odi. When you wake up that T33. Make sure and tell em to address him as _Master Petrel_."

"Kriff, I'm never gonna hear the end of this, am I?"

"Nope."

Odoli said his best option was to do something _else_ entertaining to supersede this one.

Not a problem, he laughed. It was just a matter of time.

"Alright, Master, your dominion awaits," Tank waved back at the workshop. Petrel laughed and headed back to the wash station. The less he made of it, the sooner they'd drop it. He hoped.

 

On the plus side, at least it was a standing workstation.

 

* * *

 


	5. Gram

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't like him to be so anxious over something so mundane... Or was it? Maybe this was who he was, now.  
> ...He told himself that this was just one of those things that _free beings_ had to figure out for themselves.
> 
> *CW for a mild anxiety attack. It's not too serious. You could even take it as a warning for a boring chapter ahead, because anxious thoughts can sound pretty tedious to people who aren't actually experiencing them.

* * *

 

They moved Niner to the front shop after lunch, which was perfect, as Petrel had little to say. He just floated on his little endorphin cloud and lost himself in the mindless task of cleaning an MR unit that had apparently been somewhere rather wet for a long time.

He stripped functional assemblies down to parts, brushed the parts clean in a solvent bath, and laid them out to dry next to a makeshift exhaust that looked like it had been fashioned from an old cooling intake. He hoped it condensed into one of the cycling tanks, but it wasn't yet his place to ask. It was quieter, anyway, than the big industrial hoods in the hangars he'd worked in.

When the parts were dry he dipped them in oil and sat them on mesh to drip into a pan. That, he knew, was filtered, dried and recycled, because that would be his job at the end of the day. Some of the moving parts got dry lubed with silicone; that was done on the bench where the components were reassembled. The body panels were usually finished off with lithium, but that wasn't his job, yet.

It was mindless and soothing, and his body hummed so pleasantly. The swelling had gone down, leaving welts that felt tight and hard and stung when his clothing brushed over them. When he knelt to remove another assembly from the unit, he felt that deeper discomfort, and rested back on his heel to stoke it. His eyes fell shut, breath pulled short and sharp, his head rolled loose for a moment, and once he even lost himself and whimpered a bit, and had to pretend he was grunting over a rusty bolt.

He was aware of the other techs' voices, talking to customers and each other and to Niner, but most of the time he was too deep in the zone to hear anything they were saying.

They were in and out of the workshop, muttering to themselves at the electronics bench, or looking for parts, or burying their noses in a microscope to determine the fate of damaged chips and fine motor parts. They cracked some more jokes in passing, about what they assumed he'd done over lunch. He didn't mind the teasing; Poe had always thrived on it. If anything, it was a little sad that it was so far off the mark, but he didn't feel like correcting them. They were the kind of people that liked to keep things light, and he had no desire to mess with that dynamic.

So he responded wryly to _Master Petrel,_ and when Tank tried _Master P_ he absolutely fell apart in teary-eyed, debilitating laughter, because it sounded more like some Coruscanti deejay than a tourist trying on the trappings of Old Huttspace.

He liked it here.

...

 

He didn't even notice the faint orange lines beginning to glow on the walls in the late afternoon sun until Odoli's voice startled him.

"Ay, Pechel."

"Hi! What's up?"

"Khaff," she nodded over her shoulder.

"I'd love some! Lemme clean up."

He would love some. He knew it probably wasn't a great idea, but he certainly didn't want to set a precedent of turning it down.

 

He sat down gingerly, greeted Niner, and thanked them for the caf.

"Is _ay_ the same as _hi_ in Basic?"

"Kk," she shook her head.

"So how do I say _hi_ in Rodian?"

"Go."

"Go? Means _hi_?"

She nodded.

"Shit, is that why people think you guys are so unfriendly?"

From the dryness of her response and the roll of Tank's eyes, he could guess pretty well what she'd said.

" _Really_?" he mugged. "You've _never_ heard that one before?"

She buried her forehead in her hand; Tank was loving it.

" _Go, Odi!_ I like it. It sounds like I'm cheering for you."

"Go Odi!" Tank agreed enthusiastically. She gargled something at him, probably  _don't encourage him_ , and then circled her finger at Petrel in a way that said _you're not as funny as you think you are._

"I know. I'm an asshole."

"Ghe wan oggsusset."

"Is that how you say I'm an asshole?"

She shook her head.

"Te wan Odoli," she pointed at herself. "Ghe wan Pechel," she pointed at him.

He repeated, "Ghe wan Odoli, te wan Petrel."

She nodded and pointed again. "Ghe wan oggsusset."

"Te wan oggsusset."

Unsurprisingly, they both laughed raucously at that.

"What did I just call myself?"

"She said you're adorable. And then _you_ said you're adorable."

He laughed and cringed at the same time, warmed by the familiar blend of teasing and affection. Shit, was he flirting? Was _she_ flirting? No, no, she was his _boss_ , no.

Tank translated her comment as _now you know how to talk to Rodian ladies_ , and then answered her himself: that he was pretty sure Pet was mostly into dudes? Right?

He nodded _yes._

She fell back in her chair, crying _Ye ye ye ye ye! K'ksst something Rodang something_!

He was already shaking his head as Tank provided the unnecessary translation: _Not Rodian dudes, I hope!_

"No, no- kk!" he mimicked, throwing up his hands. "I mean, nothing against them, but-"

_No? Then you must never have met any!_

[He had, but they were oddballs, and he hadn't known them closely. A cadet, a couple years younger than him, and a gunner on Mirren. They were similar: gentle, quiet young men with a very small circle of friends, better than the fewer or none they'd had at home, not eager to make any more. More at home in the Navy than they'd been anywhere else, which wasn't very.]

"Hey, Niner, you'd tell me if she said something mean about me, right?"

Nothing.

"Hell, if anyone has trash to talk, it's you, bud," Tank nodded to the inert droid.

Petrel winced at the memory of waking up curled around em like they were old friends. 

"Hey. So, um. Thanks for letting me stay here last night. Any idea where I can find someplace, for a little while?"

"Someplace that isn't a greasy mat on the floor?"

"Yeah."

Odoli made a couple of suggestions; Tank shook his head.

"How about Old Gram?" She shrugged, and he leaned back in his stool and thought about it. "You believe in the Force, Pet?"

"Of course."

"No, no, I mean _believe_ in it. Or at least, can you act like you do?"

"I do, though. I've even-" His heart punched violently at his ribs, as if it didn't intend to stick around to hear what he was going to say. "I think I've even felt it a couple of times. Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to think so."

They nodded and didn't make fun of him for it.

Old Gram was one of the original hostellers, catering to the faithful since the early days. His accommodations were spartan, monastic, even. It was very cheap, but he only rented to believers.

Petrel's heart made another attempt to break out.

"Is he Force-sensitive?"

"Naw, fuck no. He _wishes_."

His heart flopped back into place, still not happy about this plan.

"Sure. Cheap sounds good."

"I'll comm him. Hold on." Tank flicked through the display. "Oh. Also. He's deaf as a rock."

"Okay."

_"When he wants to be."_

Petrel grinned appreciatively. "Oh, that kind of old guy, huh?"

"Yeah. One-of-a-kind, every damn one of 'em."

Odi muttered something.

" _Someday_? Shit, I thought that was me now."

 

It took a few minutes for the guy's face to pop up. It wasn't unusual for people here to wear robes, but there was no denying that the cut of his beard was suspiciously like Obi-Wan's from the holos. He squinted, frowning, until he placed Tank's face.

"I REMEMBER YOU. YOU IN THE DOGHOUSE AGAIN?" he shouted, as if it were everyone _else_ that were hard of hearing.

<No sir> he typed. <Got a new guy in the shop, new in town> He pulled Petrel into the frame, wrapping his arm around his shoulders.

Petrel waved and introduced himself. Gram frowned and looked him over.

"WHERE YOU FROM, BOY?"

<Socorro, originally>

His eyebrows went up.

"INTERESTING PLACE, SOCORRO."

<Yes sir. The hot springs can be... interesting>

"YOU DON'T THINK THAT'S THE FORCE AT WORK?"

<I know it is> He nodded gravely. <I've felt it>

Gram nodded approvingly. "HOLD ON." He moved out of the frame. Tank nudged Petrel and gave him a thumbs-up, down low under the lens. Gram settled back into his chair with a heavy, leather-bound book in his lap, a real relic. He opened it up and pored over a page and finally determined that he did indeed have a room available.

"IT'S NOT FANCY."

<Good!>

"CURFEW IS MIDNIGHT. NO EXCEPTIONS."

Petrel nodded.

"YOU CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF AROUND HERE."

Of course, he nodded again.

"TWENTY CREDITS. I LOCK THE DOOR AT MIDNIGHT."

<Great. I'll see you well before then>

Gram signed off with a dour nod.

 

The three techs let out the tension they'd been holding in with snorts and giggles. Not mean ones- it was just that the guy really was what they called _a character_.

 

* * *

 

He had the first moment of misgiving a couple of hours later. It was well after dark, now, too late to start another project. Was it okay to start cleaning up? He had no idea how much autonomy he was supposed to have, here. Navy shops had set hours and shifts; in the Resistance, section leaders sometimes had to go out and _order_ their techs to stop working.

But he had no idea how it worked, out here.

_Just ask, and then you'll know._

He didn't want to ask, didn't want to let on how inexperienced he was with all this. What would they make of him? Would they guess that he'd been a soldier all his life? He couldn't have that, definitely couldn't have that.

And wasn't anyone else getting hungry?

 

And that's when it really hit him.

A sudden pang of something lonely and sad and terribly unfair, in a way that was almost childish. Had they forgotten about him? Were they just going to let him starve until he worked up the humility to ask? Were they out there snickering at his predicament?

_What the fuck?_

_Who thinks like that? You don't think like that._

He shook his head to snap out of it.

Maybe- maybe he was just feeling unmoored with no mess hall telling him when to eat. It would be ironic, considering how frequently Poe had missed those communal meals, gratefully scarfing down cold leftovers in the ready room instead. But meals set the pace of the day for a whole base. Hell, even the cruise he'd just fled had had set meal times.

He shook his head again. It wasn't like him to be so anxious over something so mundane.

Or was it? Maybe this was who he was, now.

No.

     _No._

He told himself that this was just one of those things that _free beings_ had to figure out for themselves.

Tank had bought them all breakfast. He should probably spring for dinner. Maybe they were waiting for him to offer. Or maybe they were waiting for him to leave. Maybe they didn't want to eat with him at all. Maybe they wanted him to beat it so they could make fun of him behind his back. Maybe-

["You can just make chow, if you hurry." Ackbar patted his shoulder. "Go and get some food, Commander; we'll debrief on the hour."

What had he meant by that? Bring food to the briefing room? That seemed unprofessional. Go eat with everyone else? But there were _people_ in there. People that would want to talk to him. But he didn't want to talk to anyone. Would they be insulted if he sat in a corner by himself? Tell him they didn't want to eat with him either? Tell everyone that he was rude and unsociable and-

"Alright, Poe? Rough mission?"

He jumped and looked up. The ground chief's face was soft with friendly concern. He'd been standing there in front of his locker with his life vest in his hand for... he didn't know how long.]

 

_Oh, shit._

 

He might have seen this coming, if he'd thought about it for even a minute beforehand.

_Great job, buddy. Stellar fucking job._

 

_It's okay._

_You know what to do._

_Yeah, go to medical and get a parasom._

Or, if it was one of those  _extra_ special moods, where he was suspicious of what might be in the pills, he could always make himself a pot of tea.

 

_Fuck._

 

[Rold shared studio space with a couple of other part time pros. One was another body artist, although his interest was solely in the art. He didn't have anything to do with sex, and he didn't serve up any more pain than was strictly necessary. His customers benefited from the same fine, custom blades that Rold cut and honed for his own clients.

The other was Madame Salas, a domme whose services tended toward the conventional. Among her dilettantish set of semi-professional skills was constitutional herbalism, and she offered consultations on herbal aftercare to all of the group's clients.

The tea she'd blended for Poe was wonderful. She'd told him what was in it, but plant names were one of those things that just didn't stick in his brain that well. He knew it contained mallows and barks that tasted good and soothed his throat; some nettle or thistle or something for lymph circulation and liver support (to help clear the stress hormones); some berry that was good for the tone of his blood vessels (because of the wild swings in blood pressure); and some trace nutritional support to help his skin heal (which seemed negligible compared to the bacta, but it was still nice to think about). And most importantly, in her opinion, a mild dose of blue arrow-wort.

A synthetic extract was often prescribed for anxiety, but technically, the herb itself wasn't legal anywhere in the Core, because in large doses it could be abused as an aphrodisiac. She'd found that a mild tisane could help clients avoid the gloom and paranoia that sometimes followed a really hardcore session.

 _It's not all that different than mission drop_ , Rold had explained. Poe had heard of the phenomenon, but he was young and green; it would be another couple of years before he made its acquaintance. Several years again before a Resistance doctor would offer him a few pills to keep on him, just in case. He wasn't the only one, he'd been assured. Most pilots carried them, and quite a few others, too.

At the tender age of twenty-two he'd reasoned that _technically_ , he probably wasn't supposed to be here at all, since technically, even an unauthorized sunburn could be grounds for disciplinary action. So, _yes_ , he'd told Mme Salas, _please, Ma'am. I'd like to try it_.]

 

Oh, what he wouldn't give to be there now, limp and unrestrained in a repurposed massage chair- _the torture rack_ , they'd called it affectionately. He had to stay upright for at least an hour, so the scars would heal straight. He'd be barely conscious half the time, and would eventually come around to the smell of his tea brewing, and Rold or one of his apprentices talking to him quietly, wiping the dried sweat from his body and his hair, scrubbing over his scalp and telling him how well he'd done.

He'd give anything to be there now; his heart ached for it. He touched his pocket, ran his fingers over the stiffness of the flimsi note inside it. Maybe it wasn't too late to comm her. She could make him tea- not his tea, but something- massage his scalp and tell him with calm, patronizing authority what he'd done wrong, let him apologize, let him cry.

_Breathe._

_It's okay._

_It's just your stupid hormones._

_Don't listen to them._

_You're fine._

_You're safe._

_They like you._

_Breathe._

He gave himself a minute just to breathe, and decided that food was not optional. He screwed up his courage and went out to talk to his new bosses.

 

Who, it turned out, were having the same conversation, albeit less fraught, deciding whose turn it was to go pick up dinner from a food cart.

It was fine.

Everything was fine.

 

* * *

 

Tank insisted that he wasn't just being nice by escorting Petrel to his lodgings. It was rare to find people you could trust, and those relationships needed a little tending once in a while. A few minutes of small talk with the old man were overdue.

Of course, his stupid hormones were right there to say _a likely story_. He was walking into a setup, they told him. Maybe they knew about the money, or maybe it was just him they wanted. Maybe Raven had told them everything and they just wanted a piece of him... Of course, if he'd been alone, his stupid hormones would have had a problem with _that_.

 

The place was more centrally located than he'd pictured. The neighborhood had grown up around it, Tank said, and Gram hated it. He longed for the old days, when people came here for the right reasons.

The right reasons were evident in the common room of the hostel. It was undecorated, but ringed by chairs and pillows and sofas of all sizes, to accommodate various body types. It was impossible not to envision far-flung guests sitting in a circle, practicing collective meditation.

He expected the third degree about the hot springs, but Gram just looked at him, searching. He quailed for a moment and had to remind himself that the guy wasn't really Force-sensitive. And he hadn't lied, exactly. He did believe in the Force. He _had_ felt it. He'd never claimed to be a lightsider. He met the old man's gaze and tried his best to look merely tired.

"A long journey has brought you here," he said, in a normal speaking voice. Petrel nodded.

"SIT, SIT," he gestured around the room. "WILL YOU HAVE SOME TEA?"

"I would _love_ some," he smiled. That seemed like a good sign.

"Make mine an ale!" Tank hollered after him, and watched as he shuffled away without responding. He sighed, and looked around glumly at the empty seats.

"They used to come from all over."

"Yeah, looks like it."

"That was before- you know."

He felt a pang of guilt, and hung on to it, because it was better than the anxiety. Or at least, safer than the anxiety.

"Are you from here?"

"Nah. But I've been here a while."

Petrel nodded and left it at that. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe in the calm and peace that must once have filled this room.

 

The tea was nothing special, just some reddish mint, appropriate for the late hour. At least it wasn't caf or alcohol. He let the steam fill his nostrils and reached back into his mind for that lost sense of _safety_ while they chatted.

The old man asked about business and about Tank's lady friend. Tank only raised his voice a little, using his hands freely and enunciating so the man could read his lips. Gram asked when they were going to settle down and raise kids, and he raised his fingers in a subtle _not now_ gesture. Petrel looked away, taking a sudden interest in the tassels on one of the pillows. He didn't know if Tank was even able to have children. He supposed there was all kinds of in vitro stuff they could do, but it was probably expensive. And indeed, the little hand signs in his peripheral vision seemed to involve credits.

"AH, THIS IS NO PLACE TO RAISE KIDS ANYWAY, NOWADAYS," Gram conceded. He griped about the current state of affairs in Mos Eisley. He'd had gods-damned darksiders show up at his door looking for lodging not a month ago. And things were just as bad in the galaxy at large. He warned them about the Centrists' ulterior motives, to which Petrel nodded seriously, while Tank shrugged. He heard all kinds of rumors, he said.

Asked what he'd seen out there, Petrel confirmed that it wasn't just a few misguided romantics making their way to Tatooine. Neo-imperialist sentiments were growing all over the place. Even on his home planet of Socorro, a model of peace and progress-

Tank interrupted to mutter that few places in the rim had such wealthy and well-connected patrons.

He agreed, but continued. Even there, he said, he'd run into some neos, _young_ ones, too, which was more disturbing than holdovers like his own parents. They looked down to where he was subconsciously rubbing the fading bruise on his knuckles.

"Tell me you punched one of 'em," Tank grinned.

"They started it," he shrugged.

"Well. You are just full of surprises."

"WHAT DID THE BASTARDS DO?"

"Insulted some xeno friends of mine."

Gram looked impressed.

"Well, your face looks alright, anyway. You must be able to handle yourself."

"I had help. And whaddya mean, _alright_?"

Tank chuckled at that, but Gram was reminded to inform him that there were to be NO VISITORS AFTER MIDNIGHT. If he wanted to go out on the prowl, he'd have to find somewhere else to... he brushed the air with his hand, as if hooking up were something he didn't even have the words for.

No worries, Petrel assured him. All he wanted was a quiet place to sleep.

Tank slugged down the rest of his tea and set it down definitively.

"Listen, this guy's had a long day, and that asshole boss of his expects him in early."

"RIGHT, I HEAR HE'S A REAL SLAVEDRIVER."

Tank beamed at Petrel, the twinkle in his eyes meaning he had a barb or two on the tip of his tongue about which of the two of them was more likely to be found _driving slaves_. But he spared them, and Petrel smirked down into his teacup while the old man retrieved his ledger.

_See? Everything's fine._

"YOU HAVE ID, SON?"

"Of course," he nodded, reaching for the forged document.

"SORRY, NEVER USED TO ASK FOR IT, BUT... THINGS HAVE _CHANGED_ AROUND HERE."

"No problem!" he smiled.

_This is it. You're busted. So busted._

_Don't be stupid. If it was bad it would have popped at the bank, not in this dusty old hostel._

Still, he studied the tassels again as Gram scanned it and then transcribed the data by hand into the ledger.

 

"ALL RIGHT. FOLLOW ME."

There wasn't much to see. A kitchen with a long table and few appliances, and no sign of recent activity. But glory be, there was a water tap. TWO CREDITS A LITER. That was half the price on the street; Petrel felt like hugging the guy.

"LET ME SHOW YOU TO THE OUT-BACK."

Out a triple locked back door was a coffin-like courtyard. Gram opened a slatted door in a stone wall, revealing a spotlessly clean latrine. They were treated to a rant about people who mucked up the out-back thinking it was someone else's responsibility to clean up after them.

At the bottom of the stair, Tank took his leave. He advised Petrel to set an alarm, since he wasn't yet accustomed to the quadurnal rhythms of the planet. And, he added with a wink, he'd had a long day.

 

The doors to the guest rooms were slatted too, according to traditional and climate-appropriate architecture. BEFORE ALL THAT GARBAGE GOT BUILT. Behind them were thick curtains that buttoned closed for those more concerned with privacy than ventilation.

The room was even smaller than the boudoirs he'd been in recently. More like a cell, he thought, before realizing that he'd been in cells larger than this, too. But there was a real bed, and an ample pile of blankets, and one of the vents in the wall was low enough that he could peer through it and see a slice of the outside.

He thanked his host sincerely.

"SLEEP WELL. THE FORCE IS WITH YOU."

...

 

He didn't know how long he'd been paralysed on the edge of the bunk, vacillating over what to sleep in. (Not his clothes again. He wanted out of them. He wanted to be naked and feel the sheets against his sore body. But he didn't want to take them off. He didn't know where to _start_ taking them off.) He made a face, annoyed with himself for not being able to make this one stupid decision.

His eyes went to his bag, sitting on the single shelf carved into the sandstone wall. As if it might magically contain clothes it hadn't before. He stared at it, begging it for a way out of this _stupid_ quandary.

And... it gave him one. He felt the joy of reprieve breaking like the dawn. The room was so small he didn't even need to stand up to pull it into his lap. Were they really in there?

Yes, yes they were! Thin, soft running shorts and an even thinner tee, primer gray, the standard issue PT uniform Ulon had given him. He clutched them to his chest. He didn't even try to stop himself from sobbing.

He laughed wetly at himself, at the tears in his eyes, because it was just such a stupid thing to feel so emotional about. He thought of that twenty-two year old Lieutenant, the one who didn't mind working out but _dreaded_  running. If he could only see himself now, overjoyed at the sight of a set of PTs. He'd wonder when he'd lost his fucking mind.

It was funny. He was laughing. Because it was _so_ funny.

He curled into the bunk, still holding the bundle to his chest, and let himself ride out the tears. The gratitude he felt toward Ulon was overwhelming; his body couldn't contain it. He tried to beam it out, out in the direction of the Sokor sector.

 

Before he knew it, he was cried out, loose and limp, and his limbs were too heavy to get up to change, and that was okay.

He was fine.

Everything was fine.

 

* * *

 

He half-woke in the middle of the night. Not to fear or anxiety, but to the certainty that Tank and Odi had hired him for more than just shop work. He felt kind of sad about it, but he supposed that was why he'd come here in the first place. And maybe it was the hormones, or maybe just fuzzy night logic, but he wondered if there was a reason beyond mere economy to call him _Pet_. Tank had said he'd always wanted a tooka for the shop... he could do that. He could be that.

[He'd known a guy like that, at Beeva's. He was always on all fours, or curled at his wife's feet or in her lap. He even drank from a sturdy mug on the floor. With a straw, at least, although it was probably more a concession to anatomy than to identity. He seemed very happy.]

He could see himself curled on the floor behind the counter where customers couldn't see him, a _secret pet_. Resting his head against their thighs while they petted his hair... he could get used to that...

Sleep was something thick and heavy that erased his thoughts. It was too bad, because whatever he'd been thinking had been nice...

 

* * *

 

Morning was simply foul. He was annoyed with himself for having been so paranoid, and unfairly annoyed with everyone else for doing things for him to be paranoid about.

His mood softened a little at the sight of the PTs next to his pillow, where he'd finally let go of them sometime during the night. He caressed the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. Ulon really was a good guy. He hoped he'd believed the story. That he wasn't hurt, that he'd remember him fondly.

And he was right, running really did clear the mind and the body. It would be the best way to shake off a shitty mood and get rid of whatever traces of stupid hormones were still floating around trying to trip him up.

Well, he wasn't going to do that. But if he got up now, he had time for a nice long trot around the back side of the city, where it sprawled out into the desert.

He gave free rein to the curses in his head as he put himself together and filled his flask before he left.

 

 _Deserts_ , he scowled into the chilly pre-dawn air.

It was nothing but fucking deserts anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _He half-woke... to the certainty that Tank and Odi had hired him for more than just shop work._  
>  If it's not obvious- this is not true. This is just a last little obnoxious suggestion from the hormone crash.


	6. Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to Wookieepedia, ducks do exist in the SW galaxy.

* * *

 

They waited until he'd settled into his caf before nodding at the shiny flimsiplast bag on the counter.

"Present for ya."

What? A _present_? Who could possibly-

"From who?"

"Open it."

Suspicion and delight vied as he unwrapped the package, which turned out to be a pair of slippers. Cozy, knitted slippers, perfect for cool nights in the sandstone hostel.

"From Lily."

"She didn't... _make_ these, did she?"

"Yeah she did. She said thanks for being so nice."

"Oh, stars, tell her I love them. I _love_ them!"

He thought about the long awkward flight, when Nup had barely acknowledged him, and how it had somehow led to this, and felt something alive inside him, like a little spring burbling up in the desert.

There was something else, something in the toe of one of the slippers. A packet of... toothpicks?

Tank choked on his caf.

"What, is it drugs or something?" Petrel sniffed them.

"No," Tank wheezed, wiping caf from his shirt.

He tried one; it was pliable- chewing sticks, like some people used to break worse habits. It was kind of herbal and minty and refreshing...  _oh_. These weren't for after _meals_. He blushed.

"Uh, tell Raven? I said thanks?"

"Will do, bud."

_Great, thanks girlfriend. That wasn't embarrassing at all._

He held up the slippers again and changed the subject with a brief little round of speculation on the historic parallels between knitting patterns and binary code.

"Fascinating," Tank drawled, and pulled up the display of work orders.

There was nothing urgent at the top of the list, so they would take the morning to catch up on the backlog of piddly local jobs. It was probably an insult to Petrel's skills, Tank apologized, but it had to be done. It wasn't just to pay the bills. Mos Eisley wasn't the friendliest place in the galaxy, but it was a little less hostile when commerce tied neighbors together. Thus: he swept his arm grandly and presented a shelf full of mice, aardvarks, even some non-robotic devices. Petrel wasn't insulted at all. It looked like a pretty relaxing way to spend a day.

...

 

It _was_ pretty nice. They each grabbed a unit and settled in. Petrel brought Niner right over to his bench so he could prattle at em quietly, without driving the other techs nuts. It was pleasant, as was the familiar, idle small talk of mechanics, venturing only what could be forgivably interrupted by the actual work at hand.

 

Over mid-morning caf, though, they shared a little more about their backgrounds. Petrel told more of his story in the most un-dramatic terms possible. When he admitted that he didn't know how long he was going to stay, they assumed he meant leaving the planet, and he let them.

Not many did stay, Tank grunted. On the other hand, it was also what Odi had said when she showed up, and that was what, two, three, years ago?

Petrel asked what had brought her here, if she cared to talk about it. Tank translated a few sentences before she waved at him to just tell Petrel himself; he knew the story. (And then, of course, proceeded to interrupt him with minor corrections with every other breath.) The long and short of it was that she'd grown up in a perfectly nice home on Rodia, but that she'd never been comfortable there. It was a highly gendered society, and she just didn't fit in to the gender binary, and didn't particularly want to try.

"So you came _here_?" His first impression of the place had been the brothel where Raven worked. Odi agreed that people could be pretty heteronormative around here, but it was different... there was so much diversity, and different species and races expressed gender in different ways. She didn't stand out, here. Binaries might be the norm, but she didn't feel like she was expected to conform the way she had at home. This hadn't been her first destination, and probably wouldn't be her last, but she'd gotten pretty comfortable here.

She said something grudgingly affectionate about _Tangk_.

"Uh, no, I'm the one that puts up with _your_ bullshit."

Kriff, it was so much like the way that pilots expressed their friendship, it hurt a little. He wondered if he would ever get through a day without heartache.

"So did you learn Rodian from working together, or did you know it already?"

Tank shook his head. He'd learned it as kid, from one of the custodians in the place where he grew up.

"A Rodian custodian?" Petrel couldn't help himself.

Yeah, Tank chuckled. But the guy should have been an engineer. He helped the kids modify their various assistive devices as they grew. As a boy, he'd followed the guy around like a duckling, "helping" him with odd jobs. By the time he'd graduated civic school, he was pretty fluent, and his mechanical aptitude was clear.

The place- some kind of institution, but Petrel didn't press for details- had had a job placement service for kids when they graduated. That was back when Mos Eisley was booming, and a civic corporation ran the port. So they'd sent him here, to work as a mechanic for the port authority, with promises of better pay and advancements to come.

But his supervisors there seemed to assume he was stupid, too, just because he was disabled. They gave him shitty, boring jobs and were always breathing down his neck about deadlines, and the promotions never came.

 

He'd been poached away by the previous manager of the shop. She, in turn, had been hired simply to generate plausible-looking income and expense reports, and maybe do just enough actual work to pass an audit. Petrel nodded blandly as they confirmed that the shop was in fact some kind of front.

But she'd been a good mechanic, who actually liked working, and she'd figured that the easiest way to make the reports look realistic was to actually take customers and do the work. She pocketed most of the income, on top of her stipend, and did enough business to hire an assistant.

Tank had wondered at the time if he was fucking up by getting involved with something shady, but it became clear that he'd made the right choice, because when things went tits-up, the port authority went bankrupt. His former coworkers lost their jobs. Some of them left the planet; some of them went back to work for the gangs that ran the place now.

The manager had taken a pile of money she'd saved up and disappeared, leaving him in charge. Lots of drifters came through, looking for work. Odoli had stayed. So far.

So was Tank here to stay? Maybe, he said. If it was just him, sure. But Gram was right; it really wasn't any place to raise kids these days. Oh, so they were serious about that. They were saving up credits, he said. Someday.

 

* * *

 

Lunch wasn't set by the chrono, but by a kind of cultural rhythm. At the core of it was the discomfort of warmbloods in the afternoon heat. The two humans had already felt the prick of sweat and shed the shirts under their coveralls. Odoli didn't mind it a bit, but eventually the two men decided it was time for lunch.

But before they could leave, the door opened and-

Petrel was so entranced, he didn't even realize he was staring for way too long, until it was already rude.

Lots of Twi'leks dyed their skin, if they were pale enough. Porn was full of red-skinned ladies, but you could always tell. Something about the way the dye pooled unevenly in crevices and in the fingerprint-like texture of their most sensitive flesh. But this woman- this  _girl_ , maybe; she might have been eighteen and couldn't have been more than twenty- was all natural, and it was kind of mesmerizing, the way the arterial red of her scalp faded to magenta and then to pink at the tender tips of her lekku. And she wasn't doing anything to hide it. If she'd just walked in off the streets of Mos Eisley unmolested she must be some kind of fucking _badass_.

Indeed, rows of stingers curled over her shoulders like epaulets- shit, maybe she wasn't even eighteen; soon she wouldn't even be able to deploy the weapons. Her thick, black leather armor was adorned with sharp spikes on her knees and elbows, on the toes of her boots and the knuckles of her gloves- and the blaster. The blaster was definitely relevant information, here. It was far too late to reach for his own.

"Go ahead, take a good look." _It might be the last thing you see_ was implied.

"Sorry." He ducked his head apologetically.

"What can we do for you, ma'am?" Tank sounded positively cheerful.

"Full service for my friend, here."

An R5 razzed out a brief, arrogant greeting. A circlet of tacky pink rhinestones ringed eir head, like a birthday party tiara. It was weird, but it also tickled something in his memory. He'd heard of something like this.

"That's what we're here for!" Tank smiled.

" _Now_."

"No problem!"

"Lock the door."

"Of course!"

She waved them into the back with the blaster. Odi was nowhere to be seen. She'd made it out a back entrance, he hoped.

 

"You wanna stay on or off, bud?" Petrel asked.

<"What do you think, meatbag?">

"For fuck's sake, Princess," their captor sighed. "On, please."

 

The two men worked together to begin carefully disassembling Princess. They started at the top, servicing one sensor array at a time and replacing it before removing another, so ey (she?) knew what was going on. Eir (her?) head twitched back and forth a little, and ey made quiet, harrumpf-y little noises.

"Something wrong, pal?"

<"I'm not your BUD!">

"Yeah, I gathered that from the blaster."

<"I am FEMININE.">

Well, that answered that.

" _Obviously_. I call all my girlfriends _bud_ sometimes."

She grumbled something grudging.

Tank moved on to her utility pincers while Petrel finished cleaning her head shell with a soft cloth. He made a point of admiring the rhinestone tiara.

"That's so pretty. Wish I could pull that off."

Her taser snapped out.

"Whoa, it's a figure of speech. I mean, I wish I could get away with it."

The taser crackled.

"No, _sweetie,_ it just means I think it looks better on you than it would on me. It's a compliment."

Princess laughed and put the taser away. <"I know what it means, meatbag. You should see the look on your face.">

He dropped his face into his palm, leaving a greasy smear on his forehead.

"Why you being so mean to the nice man?" the girl chided.

<"He's cute.">

"They're _both_ cute," she agreed.

Tank, who had been mostly silent and diligent, snorted explosively. He grinned down at the actuator rod he was scrubbing, looking really very pleased. Petrel thought it would have been more of a compliment if she weren't holding them at blaster point.

 

He tried to remember where he'd heard about an astromech sporting bling. He didn't think it was just a story. He had a definite association with the holodisplay in Poe's little office off the ready room, the one he rarely used except to talk to his people about personal issues... and to read intelligence reports.

_Bingo._

It's not like he hadn't guessed already that they were with some gang. And showing up in a report didn't necessarily mean they were particularly dangerous. The fact that he had apparently skimmed the report and not absorbed a lot of details meant that it had probably been tagged low priority.

Still.

 

They'd gotten down to her motivators, which should have meant they were about three-quarters done with the job. But when they opened the cowling to the front motivator- holy crap, it was a mess in there.

"Where the hell have you been?" Petrel realized as he asked that it was a dumb question, and Tank cleared his throat loudly.

"I think what he means is, do you have any idea what substances did this?" He held up the corroded interior mechanism for the gangster to inspect.

"Do you need to know?"

"Only whether it's from something alkali or not."

She frowned. "Do you know?" she asked her droid.

Princess's memory indicator blinked as she called up the relevant information and projected it:

_Average pH 4.8._

_Maximum depth 15 cm._

The men relaxed. Simple acid corrosion. That was good; that made it easy.

 

Under the crust of flaky oxides they found some surface pitting, but nothing that threatened the integrity of the parts. Her gaskets were all toast, though. The Twi'lek covered Tank with the blaster as he hovered across a wall of parts drawers, retrieving replacements.

Petrel grimaced as he uncovered a repulsor solenoid that was clearly compromised. He couldn't in good conscience put it back, but he hated the thought of the shop getting ripped off further for something a lot pricier than the gaskets.

"I could take this apart, clean it up, you'd get another few hundred hours out of it."

<"Replace it.">

"Of course, my dear."

"How much?" the gunwoman asked. Wait, was she going to _pay_ for this?

"I dunno, somewhere around fifty," Tank shrugged.

" _How much_?"

"Um. Fifty-five, according to the tag." He pointed at the drawer it came out of.

She nodded.

_Huh._

...

 

The techs sat back, wiping their hands and nodding to the reassembled droid.

"So? How's it feel?"

She spun around a few times, rocked back and forth, tested her repulsors.

<"Adequate.">

"Alright. Anything else we can do for you ladies?"

<"How about some nudies to remember you by?">

Petrel blinked, not sure he'd heard her right.

"For fuck's sake, you brat. No, and thanks for taking us on such short notice."

Princess grumbled in disappointment and rolled away with the astromech equivalent of her nose in the air.

They were ushered back out at gunpoint. The girl tossed a chip on the counter.

"That should cover it. Open the door."

He caught a flash of her backup standing guard outside. Another Twi'lek, a big, burly motherfucker with lekku like pythons and arms to match. As she backed out the door she waved and called, "Fuck you, squares!"

Tank was absolutely _beaming_ as he replied, "Fuck you too, ma'am!"

 

And at that, the intel report jumped up from whatever synapse it had been hiding in. They called themselves the Fuck You Crew. They were new, but already had a string of successful hijackings under their belts. So far, they hadn't touched any Resistance vessels. If that were to change, the source reported, they wouldn't be hard to find. They were pretty ostentatious.

Ostentatious usually meant young and fearless, with balls on their side. Either they would learn how to be more cautious, or they'd flame out, living large and pushing their luck until it ran out.

 

Tank locked the door and spoke _all clear_ into his comm. He looked absolutely delighted as he pulled out a bottle and set up three shots. He waggled his eyebrows at Petrel, who could only agree, _yeah, what a couple of characters._

Odoli emerged from the back, a stout pistol hanging from her hand. This probably wasn't their first hold-up, and it looked like they had a system. Tank was the hostage, being fluent in the more common language, and being so impressively easy-going , unlikely to make any dumb moves that would get him shot. Odi, with her acute, wide-spec vision, covered him from wherever she'd been hiding.

They toasted an enthusiastic _Fuck You_ and tossed back the shots. Tank poured another round. Petrel asked what she had left on the counter.

Tank held up the chip. A _thousand-credit_ chip. For a job that ran about three-fifty, maybe four, including all the parts they'd put in. Petrel whistled. _That_ hadn't been in the report.

"A regular Jo Danger, huh?"

"Psh. Jo Danger is fictional. Cap'n Snax is fucking real, and she was fucking _awesome._ "

Odi answered something along the same lines, the two techs talking excitedly over one another. Petrel got the impression that they were as excited about the brush with celebrity as the money. Although- the money was pretty nice.

 

They were closing early, Tank declared, and going out someplace nice to celebrate. The Moff, maybe.

"The _Moff?_ "

"It's ironic."

"Hmf."

He tried to bow out, since he didn't have anything dinner-worthy to change into. But Tank handed him a fifty and told him to pick out something Princess would like him in.

 

* * *

 

 

 


	7. Darlo

* * *

 

 

The Moff was actually pretty nice. Not Core nice, but nicer than he'd imagined existed here. They ordered fancy-ass drinks from an arrogant server, and toasted again to the pirates.

Odoli's friend Meesil joined them shortly. She was Rodian, too, and spoke some Basic, although slowly and through a heavy accent. Odi was recounting the story for her- complete with the droid jerking Petrel's chain with the taser, from the sound of it- when Raven arrived, looking much different in her street clothes and with her hair done up.

He begged her to relay his profoundest gratitude to Lily, and then thanked her with a smirk for her own gift. She allowed him to kiss her hand, and tousled his hair, and settled in next to Tank with the casual hand-holding and pecks on the cheek of a couple that had been together a while. They told the story over again for her benefit, and it was clear that everyone here was very entertained by the colorful and _generous_ gangsters.

Petrel celebrated along with them, although he was more psyched about not having been shot than with meeting the celebrity criminals. He wondered, but didn't ask aloud, about their tipping-to-killing ratio, and how they decided who deserved which.

 

The food was good, too. There was even _salad_ on the menu. He tried to order the cheaper of the two options, but the others objected: "Eat that cemetery grass on your own chip. Cap would want you to have the import."

He didn't have any objection to biocycling, but shrugged and ordered the imported one.

"One Forest Moon," the server approved. "Hold the onions." It wasn't a question. He glanced up and recognized the look on the guy's face. Not so much flirting as informing him that they would be hooking up later. Or rather, _trying_ to. He knew that look, and this guy wasn't cutting it.

He curled his lip and ordered _all the onions_. The guy frowned as if he were disappointed in him for being so uncooperative.

"Doctor's orders. I've this... exotic parasite." He circled the pad of his middle finger just below his sternum in an alluring gesture. "Raw onions keep it from... reproducing." He curled his lip again. "You know. _Spreading_."

The guy rolled his eyes and turned to take Meesil's order.

"It's _sexually transmitted_ ," he added, letting his teeth show.

 

The server didn't hit on him again, but made note of the empty seat next to him, turning to it each time as if to address its occupant, feigning surprise to find no one there. And when he later retrieved a plate scrupulously clean save for a pile of uneaten onion slices, there were daggers in his eyes.

He wasn't the only one to notice the unattached member of the party. A couple of the house girls paused and batted their eyes at him, but he shook his head firmly. The third one, though, was friend of Raven's and greeted her affectionately. They gushed over one another's outfits and hair and made a few minutes of small talk:

"So you're here, now? How do you like it?"

"It's _good_ , honey. Real good. Next time a room opens up, I'll make sure you're the _first_ to hear about it."

Raven thanked her, more for the sentiment than anything, because she doubted the woman would even remember the conversation the next day. She asked about a couple of former coworkers, but it wasn't long til she got around to her objective. She nudged Raven and asked, _So, who's your new friend?_

Raven whispered in her ear; she murmured _awww._ Then she winked at him and patted Raven's shoulder and walked away with a sashay in her step.

"What did you just say to her?"

They all frowned at him reproachfully; he knew exactly what she'd said.

 

And indeed, their dessert of rose gelato was delivered not by the spurned server, but by a sparkling, handsome, _very_ young man who introduced himself as Darlo as he slid into the empty seat, along with a serving for himself. He didn't give Petrel a chance to object, but promptly gasped, "I heard you guys met Captain Snax! Is she as _delicious_ as everyone says she is?"

Well, she was about eighteen, for starters, Petrel thought. But then, Darlo appeared to be _maybe_ twenty-two himself.

They told the story _again_ for him, already embellishing, in between his gushing about how _brave_ they were and so _smart_ to be working on _astromechs._ Somewhere in there the guy's hand landed on his thigh, and then on his back, and then around his waist, snugging him close enough that it seemed unnatural not to rest his own hand on Darlo's thigh. Eventually the hooker just took his hand and moved it brazenly into his crotch, up against the hard, probably drug-induced bulge behind his fly.

 

The Rodians excused themselves first, with a last, hearty _Pfuck You!_ Tank called for the check and paid it out of the gangsters' largess. He winked at Darlo and told him to let Petrel get _some_ sleep. The hooker promised, with a flirty little look, signaling that Tank was welcome himself anytime he wanted to try something different. Raven hummed deeply at the thought of that and tugged her boyfriend away.

Petrel couldn't help but wonder how in the hell they maintained a relationship under the circumstances.

 

"So? Where to, beautiful?"

The thought of admitting to his own puritanical lodgings was... not an option.

"Are the rooms here, uh, nice?"

"Mine's nice." Darlo rubbed against his shoulder. "It's _cosy_."

"I do actually need to, um," _need to get some sleep._

"I _promised,_ didn't I?"

"And that's okay? If I?"

"Well," the boy murmured low in his ear, "you'll sleep a lot better if you let me wear you out first."

Awkward or not, his dick agreed with _that_.

"Um, how, um?" _How much?_

"How much time you got?"

"I have to up by first dawn."

That was still almost nine hours away, but Darlo gasped so hard it sounded like he might be in medical distress. "That man is a _tyrant_ ," he managed, finally, as if he had just witnessed a brutal crime. He checked to make sure he had succeeded in making Petrel laugh, and laid three fingers against his thigh.

"Okay," Petrel nodded, still smiling. "Do you, um," he tapped at his comm, meaning, could he do a field transfer? Because he didn't have that much in burners on him.

"Of course, honey. But not here." Darlo lowered his voice. "It's tacky."

 

* * *

 

Darlo paused them in the landing. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but. It looks like you haven't done this a lot."

"No. Sorry."

He'd done more of it in the last two weeks than he had in his whole life before, those two youthful misunderstandings. But this felt different. This felt... realer.

"It's okay, hon. You can trust me."

 

* * *

 

"So welcome to _chez moi_." Darlo's room was something that was already starting to look familiar. "Take your shoes off, make yourself comfortable."

Petrel took his boots and jacket off and couldn't stop himself from saying, "Thank you. Thank you for, um-"

"And _what?_ Am I gonna _do_ with you?" Darlo interrupted his stammering, squeezing his hips, thumbs in his groin, looking him over like he was deciding which parts to eat first.

"Um."

"Oh! Show you this, duh." He flipped through his chrono until his own face popped up, at the top of his health card. Under it were a color-coded series of dates and codes: his vaccination history. At the bottom was a bright pink square and the date of his vasectomy, and after that the dates of his follow-up visits.

"In case you're worried about getting pregnant," he grinned. It wasn't just a reassurance; it was also a reminder. Petrel activated the local field on his own chrono, and transferred 350 credits.

"Aww, that's nice." Darlo squeezed him again and kissed his cheek. "So tell me, what are you into?" He took Petrel's hand and stepped back, sat on the edge of his bed. His legs were spread wide, inviting, like he knew exactly what Petrel was into.

"Can I ask you something? Hypothetically?"

Darlo appeared delighted at the mention of hypotheticals; his eyebrows bounced lasciviously.

"Just say, hypothetically, if all I wanted was a quick blowjob."

Delight cascaded into a suspicious glower.

"No no no, no, I mean, I already-"  _I already paid you_ , but he couldn't make himself say it. " _Strictly_ hypothetically."

"Hypothetically," the boy repeated, dripping with suspicion.

"I'm just curious." It came out dry. His eyes were on the floor at this point, remembering the way Raven had called him an idiot.

"Why?"

"Like you said. I don't have a lot of... experience. With this."

Darlo didn't call him an idiot. He did sigh, though, and it sounded weary.

"For you? Probably twenty. If you had a room here."

"What do you mean, _for me_?"

"It's not because you're pretty. Plenty of straight-up jerkwads are good-looking."

Petrel nodded at the floor.

"Because you're... polite. 'Cause you're sweet."

 

[ _Sweet_ was what the first guy had called him afterwards, in one of a long bank of fresher stalls with floor-to ceiling doors. Poe had never been brought off so fast in his life, and didn't know what to do. What he'd _normally_ do would be to drop down to embrace the guy, kiss his neck, lick the taste of himself out of his mouth, tell him to give him a minute and he'd do the same. But all he could think to do in that situation was to offer a handshake, and thank the guy, _thank you, wow, that was really awesome, thank you_.

The guy had looked at him curiously for a moment, and then his face softened. _Oh_ , it said. _You didn't know._

Poe saw it, and the guy saw him see it; he knew that Poe knew that he knew, and that Poe knew that. It was excruciating, the awkwardness on Poe's part and the patronizing sadness on the guy's face.

"You're sweet," the guy said, and kissed the top of his head. "Don't ever change."]

 

"And for...?"

Darlo sighed. "A quarter. Thirty if they look like a sleemo. Fifty for xenos. At least."

Petrel stiffened at the last, but it made sense. It wasn't anything bigoted. Plenty of xenos were incompatible with humans. Not just gross, or maybe an acquired taste, but potentially injurious or straight-up toxic. From that perspective, fifty seemed like nowhere near enough.

"Thanks," he whispered.

Darlo grunted quietly.

"But you're working for Raven's old man. And it sounds like you're good at it. You don't think that's gonna work out?"

"Yeah. Probably. But it wouldn't be the first time I _thought_ something was gonna work out."

He grunted again, louder.

"I told you," Petrel pleaded lightly, "they open at second _dawn_."

Darlo relaxed again, grinning at him. "Oi, that's a fuckin' dealbreaker."

"Right?"

"C'mere," the hooker beckoned with his fingers. Petrel obeyed, walked right into the space between his thighs. Darlo tugged his blouse out of his trousers, and Petrel pulled it off over his head, without even unfastening it. He paused when the cuffs were the last part clinging to his body, behind his back. Held them there and let a sine wave of abandon roll up through his body, absorbed the appreciative hum it earned him, and tossed it away.

Darlo's eyes wandered over him; he knew he looked good in an undershirt, but then, who didn't? He went through the motions, popping his biceps and then retreating into something feline, offering the guy all the options. Fingers plucked at the hem of the undershirt, so he took that off, too. They admired the scars on his ribs, and then one shot up and circled, _turn around_.

 

He'd gotten a lot of reactions over the years, but this was one he'd never heard, never even imagined.

"Thought you said you didn't have much experience with this."

He turned around, "What?"

"You telling me you didn't pay for that?"

[Most of it, yes. On Mirrin, he'd been a client. In the Resistance, though, they were comrades, friends, and, technically, outlaws. Credits meant nothing between them.]

"Yeah, of course... But that was... different."

"Different how?"

"I mean, we didn't," he opened his hand helplessly.

[That wasn't entirely true. Rold had never touched him that way, but his apprentices had. Sometimes.]

"Maybe," he conceded.

But they were _artists_. Surely there were light years of difference between what they did and taking half a chip to suck some boar's cock and hope you spat enough out that your guts wouldn't be paralysed for the next three days.

Right?

"I'm sorry, I just never thought about it that way. But I don't really think it's the same?"

Maybe he was lying to himself. Or maybe Darlo was trying to lie to _himself_.

"Yeah no, it's not the same. I was asking if it's the same for _you._ "

"Oh."

"What would you do right now, if you could have anything you wanted?"

Before he could contemplate _anything_ \- they'd be here all night talking- Petrel dropped to his knees, wrapped his arms behind his back, and dropped his chin against his chest. Darlo's gaze wandered over his face, now, and a hand followed, fingernails along his jaw, under his lip, a pause at his cheek to feel out the same hollow Three had found. Petrel pressed into it, but Darlo just hummed like he was saving that information for later, and made his way up into his hair. He tugged gently, nothing severe, and trailed back down to his chin, nudged it up to look at him.

 

"This. This is _very_ sexy. This is fucking beautiful."

Petrel's eyes dashed down, sensing the _but_ coming.

"Look at me."

He tried to.

"This?" Darlo waved across his submissive form. "This is not for sale."

"I know."

"You sure you understand?"

 

Back at Beeva's, there had been a saying. They said it was a _gift_. He'd always recoiled from it, because one, it just sounded so overwrought and dramatic, and two, he'd always known he'd been selfish with his desires. He was generous, too, sure, but that wasn't what it meant. It just didn't describe him at all.

But maybe... maybe it wasn't that kind of gift.

_[I am interested only in your power._

_How you protected yourself._

_It comforts you.]_

Maybe it was a _gift_ , something he was born with. The way Poe had always been able to step out of his own ego, his own body, it seemed, when the mission called for it. The way that, in the wake of trauma, he'd retreated into it, burrowed deep inside, tiny, invisible, silent, imperceptible. Supernatural shit. That kind of a gift. He rubbed his chin against his chest, feeling for a hint of warmth from the golden glow that Danice had promised was still inside him.

 

"This can _never_ be for sale." Darlo was emphatic. "It's not just about your own safety. You gotta think of the next girl. You can't let people think they're entitled to this."

Well, _that_ was something Poe Dameron would have understood.

 

He felt a crack across the only future he'd ever really imagined for himself, like a crack in a mirror. It didn't shatter, but it was suddenly much more fragile than it had been.

He tried to hold it together. He broke his pose, reached into his pocket and showed Darlo the note from Eleven. The boy frowned at it, frowned at Petrel.

"I didn't..." _do what people normally do there._

"I'm sure you didn't." Darlo sounded a little amused, but still displeased.

"I just wanted to see. I thought maybe, if things _don't_ work out..."

"Ah."

 

He wrapped his arms around himself, staring at the floor, waiting for whatever judgment the boy would pronounce.

"Those girls aren't like you, Pet. They're not there because they're _into_ it."

"I know."

"Those people are _actors_."

Yeah... actors who had sex with people for money. He supposed Darlo was acting on some level, too.

"Everyone has their racket, and everyone has what's theirs, and you gotta keep those things straight. I promise you, none of those girls at the Palace Room are confused about what's theirs and what's not."

He doubted it was always quite that cut and dry, but the principle was clear enough.

"You have to be in charge of every situation. And you won't be, when you get a little taste of that..." Darlo lined his hand up against his cheek again, and fuck if he wasn't right; it was like a drug hitting his bloodstream, making his eyelids heavy, making him _want_.

"This isn't for just anybody, darlin. This is _yours_."

He knew that, or at least _had_ known it, once. He looked up at Darlo and whispered a sincere _thank you_.

The boy smiled a little and spread his fingers, cradling Petrel's cheek rather than threatening it. He pressed into it, accepting the comfort that was being offered. Darlo's hand wasn't warm or rough enough to be really reassuring; he was so young, so thin and his skin was so soft. But he was here.

 

And that was part of what all this was about, wasn't it? Being there, when no one else was?

Wasn't that just what he'd always done, _before_ , right up until the moment he hadn't? He'd been there; been a soldier in a galaxy that had rejected militarization. Been a rebel against a benevolent authority, a fighter against an invisible threat. Hell, he'd been called a terrorist enough times; prostitution would be a step up, really, in the conventional moral esteem.

He let the weight of his head rest in that hand. He didn't dare kiss his palm, but the boy smoothed a thumb across his lips.

"You're special. Don't forget it."

 

 

He ruffled his hair again and asked if Petrel got high. Of course, he said, and offered the pipe from his pocket.

"You first," Darlo said, with the rueful little smile of someone who, if he hadn't been blacklighted before, certainly knew people who had.

Petrel took a hit and hummed into the sudden lightness in his shoulders, the faint sparkle around the dim little room. Darlo took one too, and then another, and another. He chuckled and gave it back.

"Shit, Pet, you gotta try some of the _good_ shit."

He took a contraption from his nightstand, a heavy pipe with a clear glass dome in the middle. He clicked something. A light turned from blue to orange and he toked it, waited a second while vapor filled the dome, and then inhaled the swirling mist. His head rolled back on his shoulders.

"Fuck yeah, that's it."

He showed Petrel where to hold his thumb over a valve until he hit it. Don't wait more than a second or two, he said, or the vapor would start to condense.

It was nice; the vapor was cool and smooth. The smoke from his cheap little pocket piece seemed harsh and hot by comparison.

Before he could hand it back, fireworks blossomed before his eyes, popped, bloomed, over and over, obscuring his vision; they were _beautiful_. After a minute they faded like flowers as the season passes, until he could see again.

He could see again, and everything was just _made_ of flowers, the walls, the sheets, the sparse furniture, all made of flowers with fathomless centers from which they bloomed and rebloomed endlessly.

Darlo chuckled again, and Petrel thought he could see it effervescing, little bubbles streaming up and floating away. _Just one more, and then you're probably good_ , he determined.

Another hit, and the corners and shadows deepened, distorting the shape of the room, stretching it at the corners, and he imagined the stone walls tearing like stretchy dough and giving way to the great void of space.

When Darlo took the thing back, their fingers touched, and it was fucking _electric_ , the sparks were in his skin, too, and _oh_ , it was so _amazing_ just to touch himself, to trace the back of his hand with a single finger, _fuck_ that was so cool, fucking magical.

Darlo tugged at his elbow, and the shadows were in him, too, the backs of his knees and the cleft of his ass and his armpits, they deepened and threatened to dismember him, but his body stretched and seemed able to accommodate them endlessly.

"Come on up here, beautiful."

He felt his eyes widen. This gorgeous boy thought _he_ was beautiful? He wasn't sure if it was flattering or just funny, but it must have been one of those things because he was laughing, the little bubbles bubbling up in his chest and floating out of his own mouth.

He sat on the edge of the bed, and Darlo thought _that_ was funny, too.

Kriff, he was right; this really was the good stuff, because how could everything be so fantastically magical and so _funny_ at the same time? Everything was just a series of delights, tripping from one moment to the next, the last falling away; he could almost _see_ his thoughts receding, like flagstones that he had stepped on falling away behind him through space.

 

Darlo stood in front of him and stripped his glittery little top off. One thought was that he had just done the same thing... another thought was that he hoped the pretty shirt was okay on the floor, that it didn't feel sad or abandoned. He couldn't hold both thoughts in his head, and then one of them was gone, and he tried to hang onto the thought of the shirt, because it felt important, and he felt completely untethered with all his thoughts flying away so fast, like he couldn't remember anything for more than a few seconds.

But then everything else, literally _everything_ else, was consigned to irrelevance when Darlo touched his chest with those wonderfully soft fingers. For a moment, the only things that existed were _soft_ and _pleasure_. He reached out a tentative hand to the boy's flank, and gentle, pastel sparks rippled across his skin. He traced his fingers over his torso, just to watch the shimmery cascades of sparks. It was _enchanting_.

 

When Darlo guided him down, onto the bed together, there was a moment when it seemed an unspeakable privilege, and then that was falling away too, as he lost himself in the wide black depths of the boy's eyes, and the sparks in his fingertips as he stroked his arm; he was just lost in pleasure and contentment and wonder.

He thought it must not be possible for the human body to absorb any more pleasure than this. One more drop and he would just... evaporate...

 

Darlo's eyes flicked down, _no, don't look away,_ and up again, and fucking _Force_ but the eye was a miraculous organ. Down again, and closed, and he didn't have time to miss them before noticing how delicate his eyelids were, and how soft his lips were, the softest thing in all existence, and he'd been right, it was more pleasure than his body could contain; atoms began detaching themselves one by one from the top of his head and floating up toward the ceiling.

He opened his eyes again while he still had them, opened his eyes and saw where he was and pulled away, gasping; he could practically hear the goons from the bar breaking in and dragging him away.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! Fuck, I'm so high, I know that's no excuse, shit, I didn't mean to!"

The boy just laughed again. "You didn't, silly. I did."

"Oh!" He blinked. "Is that, is that okay?" And then blinked again, because he was already losing his grasp on whatever it was that he was so concerned about.

"Is it okay with _you_?"

He didn't know, because it was too late, the thing was lost. But what _wasn't_ okay was the wrinkle in the boy's forehead. He smoothed it with his thumb- well, he rubbed a bicep with his thumb, was confused that it didn't work, that the wrinkle was still there.

"Yeah, it's okay, anything you want. Anything." He meant it; anything was okay as long as it soothed the boy's brow.

"Yeah?"

Oh, there it went, thank the Force. And he was even smiling again, too, just a peek of his teeth at the corner or his mouth, he had the most adorable teeth.

"Yeah, yeah, anything."

"Good." Darlo hooked their legs together, anchoring him, pulled him close and kissed him again. "I mean," he paused, "don't go _trying_ it or anything."

"No, I promise," Petrel murmured, really trying to remember this one.

"With anyone else, I mean."

"Okay."

"Especially with _women_."

"Okay."

For a millisecond that made _perfect_ sense, and then he just didn't know, just didn't know what the hell was going on. Then Darlo kissed him again, and _that_ was what was going on, and it was all he needed to know. He fell easily back into it, into softness, the softest- no, there were no superlatives; it was just the elemental quality of softness, the soft that all other softnesses imitated, softness as a way of being.

The matter in his body resumed its dissolution and migration toward the ceiling, forming a little cloud of liberated atoms watching them. They were so beautiful together, the cloud thought, with their bare torsos and handsome faces, kissing soft and slow, lazy fingers trailing over arms and ribs, flirting with the man's belt, maybe, but they didn't need to do anything with that, because this was so perfect, just the way it was.

 

After a while, though, the boy got hungry, and he ate his way down the man's neck, down his chest, leaving a plume of atoms in his wake as fresh trillions joined the cloud. And when his tongue swirled around the head of the man's cock, _poof_ , they all jumped up at once.

 

Snap had tried to describe to him, what it was like when the _Ravager_ fell on Jakku. Tried, failed, kept trying:

Sand erupting like lava from a volcano.

Sand jumping into the air and suspending itself there like it wasn't even solid.

Sand raining upwards toward the sky.

 

Yeah, that's what the man's constituent particles were doing.

 

_Raining upward toward the sky._

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued... this chapter was getting kinda long. There will be proper smut in the next one.


	8. Silverwings

* * *

 

There was a pleasant susurrus in the room, like a gentle tide lapping at the shore.

He was moved almost to tears when he realized that the ocean was the boy's hair, and his own fingers were the moons that moved the tides.

So, still stoned, then.

It was fine, though. This was nice, and he was pretty sure it was nice for the kid, too. He'd like it, if someone had the patience to stroke his hair like this, steady and regular, tireless as the orbits of celestial bodies.

 

* * *

 

Dawn broke through his fingers, the sun climbing the steps of his body to smile over the horizon. Its fingers lit his shoulders, made his flesh shimmer and shine from within.

"Hey."

_hey_

"Hey."

_hey_

 

What?

 

"What was that stuff we were smoking last night?"

_night_

_night_

_night    night    night    night_

 

Okay, still _very_ high, shit.

 

"Haha," Darlo laughed, 

_haha haha haha haha haha_

It stretched out like a chain, circled around his head, like a maglev train spanning his equator, 

_hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha_

 

"Last night? You mean like an hour ago?"

_go      go      li  go      go      li_

"What time is it?" He tried whispering, and it seemed to echo less.

"Like, midnight?"

_night?_

"No way."

Darlo lit up his chrono, it was only a little after midnight.

"Shit. I think I was kinda tripping for a while, there."

"You were fucking _gone,_ man."

            _onn       onn       onn      onn_

 "Shhhhh."

"Shhh like, don't talk?" Darlo whispered. "Or whisper?"

" _Whisper_."

"I gotcha."

"Sorry I'm such a lightweight."

"No worries. You take your time, enjoy it. I ain't going nowhere. I mean, I _live_ here."

That was funny. Wasn't it? It seemed funny. Or sounded funny.

 

_onn   onn   onn   onn   onn   onn_

_hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha_

_night     night     night     night_

 

It was actually a pretty tight little track, but you couldn't exactly dance to it. And. He was afraid it might not ever go away.

"Darlo? Can I ask you for something?"

Oh look, there were those pretty teeth again.

"What do you need, darlin'?"

"Would you-" he ran his fingers though his hair.

"Course, hon. Like this?" He brushed Petrel's hair lightly. "Or like this?" He let his fingernails graze against his scalp.

"Oh, that one. With the nails."

"You got it." Darlo kissed his forehead and settled in to scratching him. He even closed his eyes, so Petrel closed his, too.

 

Oh, this was good. He relaxed into it, into the sound of crashing waves; he was the beach, now.

 

But then he heard it coming back, from a distance,

 

_go   go    go li go  go   go li_

_hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha_

_night night night night_

 

He recognized the trajectory, a satellite in elliptical orbit around him. Around his head. Around the universe that his skull contained. Around the planet that the beach was on. He saw it arc across the sky; it was loud and rushing as it slung around him, and then he could hear the waveshift as it raced away.

At its apogee he couldn't hear it at all, but knew it would come back again, and again and again and again.

He thought about summoning a missile to shoot it down, but it seemed unwise to do that sort of violence to his own nervous system. A solar flare, maybe. Just enough to nudge it out of orbit.

He watched this strange flying train traverse the ellipse,

 

_onn     onn     onn    onn_

_hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha_

_night night night night_

 

until it gleamed in the sun... _now._ A barrage of ions washed over the surface, their individual force vectors imperceptible but together amounting to a significant perturbation. The satellite wobbled, as if it were trying to cling to its path, and then tipped, spinning away into the void.

 

The beach was at peace again, the only sound the gentle tide.

 

 

* * *

 

"Be right back, hon," Darlo whispered, and excused himself through a... rug? On the wall?

 _A secret door_?

Petrel felt a flash of anxiety- where was he going? How long would he be gone? He pictured a stone passage in the wall, descending into a labyrinth of narrow tunnels and hidden chambers.

Maybe that's where they kept the secret. _How to survive when you have no one._ Maybe he was going to retrieve it? To share?

Was he supposed to follow him? But he'd hesitated; he'd never catch up now, he'd get lost trying to follow the boy. He could see himself wandering for hours, days, in winding stone passages. Lost forever; he'd die there, and haunt the tunnels, still searching-

There was the unmistakable whoosh of a vacuum toilet, followed by the hum of a self-cleaning cycle, and reality tilted ninety degrees back toward normal.

Still, his first thought was: if that was just the fresher, where was the real entrance to the labyrinth?

So maybe still _a little_ stoned.

 

...

 

"Miss me?" Darlo whispered as he curled back into Petrel's side.

"I _did_ ," he said, not wanting to admit how very true that was. He pushed his face into his hair. "Is this alright?"

"Yeah. Can I eat that tendon in your neck for a snack?"

"Yeah, anything. You don't have to ask."

He rubbed his face in the boy's hair. His forehead, his nose, his lips; they were so _alive_. The sparks had died down, but it was still pretty fucking magical. A nice, manageable level of magic.

"So, what was that stuff?"

"Called Silverwings."

"I was _definitely_ tripping."

"Yeah, it's good stuff. Sorry if it was too much."

"You know I could see you laughing? Little bubbles," he twinkled his hand in the air, "pop, pop, pop."

"You're fucking adorable."

"Shit, was I an asshole?"

Darlo laughed out loud. "No. Do you even know _how_ to be one?"

"Oh, yeah. I sure do."

"I was starting to wonder if you even _have_ one."

Petrel growled into his ear, and the sound needed no translation; the guy's hand slid down to his hip, fingers stretched across his butt and squeezed.

"Sorry I'm such a lightweight."

"Mmmm, wouldn't call you _lightweight_."

Petrel grinned in delight. He put his hand over Darlo's and pushed, and Darlo chuckled, low and sultry, and helped himself to a generous handful of asscheek.

"When did I take my pants off?"

"You remember me going down on you?"

"Yes! Oh, stars,  _Darlo_."

Something about that was so _touching_ , kriff. He pushed his forehead down into his shoulder, smoothed his hand over his hip, open, undemanding.

"Yeah, there's nothing lightweight about _you_ , Pet."

Petrel snickered into his chest.

"And I'm not just talking about your sweet, sweet, fuckable ass."

He snickered harder, on the verge of giggling. But Darlo pushed him down onto his stomach and straddled his hips, oh _yeah_. Petrel arched and pushed up with his hips, _yeah, fuck me,_ his body said, loud and clear.

"No no no," he murmured. "I'm talking about _this_." He ran his fingers along the scars. "This is heavy, man. This is hardcore."

"Yeah," he breathed, feeling heavier already, sinking into it.

"Tell me about it?"

"Yeah. I mean, are you gonna fuck me?"

"Yeah. Don't you worry."

"Okay. What do you wanna know?"

"Like, how bad did it hurt?"

"Pretty bad. Real bad."

"Did it bleed a lot?"

"No, not- hardly at all."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he- he was real good. It was real sharp, and real shallow. Stopped right at the, uh, hypodermis? I think? You can't even feel it, at first. Then it starts to sting."

Darlo made a noise that suggested he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest.

"Then he just," he mimicked the motion with his thumb, of gently rolling the skin away, skinning him alive, a few millimeters at a time. "He was real careful. And slow _._ "

"Ugh, fuck, _ow_."

"Yeah. Real slow. When he was happy with the way it looked, he washed it with this primitive antiseptic. Some kind of alcohol. It felt like this... wet... fire, or something."

"Okay, stop, ow."

"Like the opposite of bacta. Kills the damaged tissue faster."

" _Kriff._ How did you sit _still_ for that?"

"Haha. How do you think?"

He felt hands on his arms, easing them against his sides, palms up.

"That's nice," he whispered.

Darlo picked one hand up and ran his fingers over Petrel's palm, letting the last, lingering sparkles of electricity pass between them. Then he set it down, not at his side, but just above his tailbone. And waited, to see how Petrel would respond to that.

 

As if there were any question. He lifted the other hand, too, and crossed his wrists.

"You like that."

"Yeah. What I really like is," he drew his forearms up parallel.

"Mmm. Can you touch your elbows?"

"Barely. I could when I was your age."

"How about..." Darlo grasped his forearms gently, and bent his elbows, pushed his wrists back together somewhere between his shoulder blades. It pulled at his shoulders; it had been a long time since he'd tried something like that. Even then, when he was younger, it had started to strain pretty quickly. The best part of it was that he couldn't lie on his back like that; he had to bend over, face in the mattress and ass in the air, like a slut, like an animal. The thought of it rippled through him and went straight to his cock, and the noise that escaped his throat was unmistakable. _Willing prey_ , it said.

Darlo sounded interested, but.

"I can't do that for long," he admitted, and eased himself back into familiar comfort. "I can stay like this for _hours_ , though."

"Can you, now," Darlo purred.

"Yeah."

"Well, then. I think you should go clean yourself up. And then you bring this," groping his ass again, "right back here for me. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," Petrel grinned, without a trace of deference.

"Good boy." Darlo swatted him on the ass with a friendly wink that said, _Hey, don't expect to have your mind blown or anything, but I think we can have fun with this._

 

That was fine. His mind had been blown enough for one night already.

 

 

* * *

 

"So, do you need to, like, struggle?"

"No, nope. Uh-uh."

"Okay, because I'm pretty sure you could break these if you tried, and I like them." He held out two black bands, one of kidskin leather and one of satin, stiff with some kind of stay. Collars? Chokers? Darlo confirmed that by wrapping one around his neck and rolling his head, showing it off. It was a _good_ fucking look on him, damn.

"I won't break them, I promise. I just like to feel..." _safe._ "Secure."

"Okay. And you meant it, about hours? Or maybe, like, an hour?"

Petrel's heart leapt.

" _Yes_."

"Good. 'Cause I was thinking."

He showed what else he'd gathered: A handful of condoms and little single-serv packets of lube, the ones you could buy for a credit out of machines, and that medbay gave out for free. And two plugs. One was a worryingly nubbly massager, thin-necked, too, a bouncy little number. The kind of thing someone truly evil would make you wear, possibly for the purpose of laughing at your plight: utter paralysis, afraid to move for fear of coming in your shorts. Darlo didn't seem evil, he thought, but he did seem to like a good laugh.

The other was stout, a nice old-fashioned  _I want you ready for me when I get home_ type job. That one, he could handle.

"So here's the thing. My stims are wearing off, and it's gonna be a while before I can really treat you right."

A while? Petrel looked up, wondering how long was _a while_ , but caught Darlo chewing his lip, shy about admitting to it.

"I don't need them for _you_ , sweetie. But after a few hours, it takes a while to bounce back, you know?"

"Of course," he nodded, as if he knew the slightest thing about boner stims.

"So I was thinking I'd take a nice little nap, and when I'm ready I'll just roll over and fuck you whether you're awake or not."

Petrel shuddered and couldn't even think of the word for _yes,_ because he was just made of _yes_ , the world was made of _yes._

 

Of course, the stupid _rational_ part of his brain pointed out that there wasn't a chance in any hell of that actually working, no matter what he was on or how thick the plug was. But his brain could just back the fuck off, because he was one _thousand_ percent willing to fake it, if that's what the kid wanted.

"Fuck, man, if we hadn't already smoked,"

_No, don't say what it sounds like you're about to say-_

"If you wanted to like, narc me up or something. I'd do that."

Darlo's nostrils flared; a sharp inhale said as much as his words,

"F-fuck, Pet. That would be fucking hot."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Maybe- maybe next time?"

He nodded in agreement, too caught up in the insanely irresponsible eroticism of it to be flattered by the invitation.

"Or shit, I could get some caro pods, you ever do those?"

"Never heard of 'em."

"They're like these sticky little seed pods, and they make you _so_ horny."

"Um."

"Not like dust or bluies. Like, crazy horny, kinda aggro. _That_ would get you outta your shell, man. We should do 'em together; it'd be fun."

"Okay," he grinned, the flattery finally catching up. Darlo wanted to see him again. And wanted to get him  _out of his shell_. The fact that he'd even perceived the shell at all was enough to make him grateful, to say yes to anything he proposed. He knew, deep down inside, that the guy was more interested in his credits than in him. But it was a nice feeling, and he gave in to it.

 

"So, either of those-"

"The big one," he said quickly.

"Oh good, so you're not  _totally_ insane."

 _Maybe next time_ , he wanted to say.

"You wanna do the honors, or me?"

He nodded at Darlo, licking his lips. The guy looked a little bemused.

"Hawk got your tongue?"

He nodded again.

"But you are definitely into this?"

He forced himself to say, " _Yes._ Yes. Yes."

"Okay. Well. You just- be good, then. Let me take care of you."

He smiled and blinked at Darlo; _please, thank you_. Then he rolled over, pushed his face into the mattress, clamped his hands over his neck, like a prisoner, spread his legs.

"Up," Darlo tapped his thigh. There was the snap of a glove, the tearing of packets. It was weird to think of how many of those things he must go through. It made sense, hygiene-wise, but he could just picture dozens, hundreds, mounds of the things.

Darlo was astonishingly efficient, twisting, tugging, splaying, like it was his fucking job, or something. It was almost clinical. Before he could even appreciate anything besides how _impressed_ he was, he was already hissing past the shoulders of the plug, wiggling around to seat it comfortably, stretching out again with his hands where they belonged.

 

He probably could break the makeshift restraints, but it was still a little thrilling to submit to a perfect stranger like this. [It wasn't that Poe had _never_ done anything like that. There had been a couple of times, when he was maybe around twenty, young enough to possess that dangerous combination of confidence, naivete, and terribly urgent need.]

"Comfortable?"

_Fuck._

_Shut up, brain._

He tested the straps, turned his wrists and wiggled his fingers. He should probably ask Darlo to check his capillary refill, but he knew he wasn't going to. They felt good, and he nodded in assent.

"Okay." Darlo turned his captive's face away, and patted him on the head. "You be good, now. Be nice and quiet, and let daddy get some rest."

Petrel snorted out loud before he could even try to repress it.

"No? That doesn't work for you?"

"No," he laughed. "Even if you _weren't_ like ten years younger than me. That wouldn't work for me."

"Alright. Good to know."

_Oh!_

"Oh! Wait."

"Whassup?"

"I should tell you."

"Yes, you should."

"I don't like, um."

The boy nodded, encouraging.

"I don't like being called names," he whispered. "Like, derogatory ones." It was strange to say it out loud. Strange to _have_ to say it.

"Mm. Like _bitch_ or _slut,_ stuff like that?"

"Yeah, exactly. Like, that first one, anyway."

"Cool. Gotcha."

"But I mean. I guess I don't mind that second one."

"Slut?"

He blushed into the mattress.

"Don't mind it, or kinda like it?"

"I mean. It's not... necessarily derogatory, right?"

"I sure hope not," Darlo snorted. "Anything else?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Okay. Where were we? Oh yeah." He stretched and yawned and patted Petrel's shoulder. "You be nice and quiet and let mama get some rest. You slut."

Petrel smiled into the dimly lit little room. He liked this kid. This kid was fun.

 

In fact, he had to admit he liked this whole _thing_. Paying someone to just take care of him. They'd all been so nice to him. So accommodating. Willing to work with the fact that lately, the hawk did seem to have his tongue. No one demanded that he use his words; he didn't feel like he needed to justify himself, to assuage anyone's conscience or satisfy any expectation of honesty.

He frowned a little. He supposed _Poe_ would have said that it was still exploitation, regardless how shy or polite or how sweet he came across. But then, apparently, Poe had been doing this all along and not admitting it to himself. So there. 

He should have said something about CSMs, though. He would, next time. And then he smiled again, feeling warm and happy that Darlo wanted there to be a next time. Even if it was only really about the credits.

The thing was, he _had_  credits. It was a fucking novelty, having credits to spare. It wouldn't last long at this rate- between the luxury cruise and the high-priced whores, the drinking and the spice. And he could only assume that the good stuff, Silverwings and other boutique brands, was pricier than the apparently sub-standard stuff he'd been smoking. No, it wouldn't last long at this rate. But that was okay. When it ran out, well. He had options, more than he'd imagined at first. And there was always the blaster.

Gods, he loved that thing.

He remembered the weight of it on his tongue, his lips tight around the smooth barrel...

_...his knee slipping, his body crashing..._

_...a soft, dry cloth in his hand, polishing rhinestones..._

_...mounds of squeezed-flat empty lube packets. Piles of them, barrels of them, like rose petals gathered to be steamed and pressed into fancy oils for his skin and hair..._

_...flowers unfurling endlessly..._

A gentle humor, because a bud opening to a flower was the most ridiculously cliché metaphor for sex.

_...a shelf with a row of wooden figures, carved from tree roots. They were his children, and the tree was the father. His name was Larissya, and they were her children. She picked up the middle one, the middle child. He was a dancer. It wasn't what she would have chosen for him, but he was good at it, and it made him happy. She just wanted him to be happy. She held him fondly, and set him back on the shelf..._

 

His legs twitched and jerked him awake. He wasn't done looking at the shelf, but the clouds parted and it was gone. Instead there were the closed doors of Darlo's wardrobe before his eyes.

More secrets.

If he was really going to fall asleep, then he supposed he should at least make himself an easy target. He spread his legs wide and bent one, pulling his knee almost up to his chest.

He liked the thought of the kid knocking him out, or hopping him up on aphrodisiacs, taking him, using him. He... trusted him? Not real trust, maybe, but.

It wouldn't make sense for him to hurt him. Not when he would keep coming back, a few hundred credits at a time. Trusted him more than any rando he might pick up in a cantina, anyway. Maybe that was part of the transaction.

That seemed like an important insight, but sleep was already rolling over him again, pulling him under.

 

* * *

 

He heard Darlo getting himself ready, and that thrill ran through him: _what if he hurts me?_

_You can't know his mind. You only have your choice._

_It's your choice._

The weight of his body shifted on the mattress, straddling his outstretched leg.

_I trust him. Even if he hurts me._

_He can have anything he wants. I trust him._

He relaxed again, ready to let anything happen.

A soft hand, spreading his ass.

"It's okay," Darlo whispered, so quietly he might have been talking to himself. "It's just me. It's okay."

He was gentle as he twisted the plug out, and Petrel felt weirdly incontinent, lying there passively, pretending to sleep, like he was shitting a stranger's bed. It was weird not to participate, even if that participation was just begging and groaning and tugging uselessly at heavy leather.

A hand, light on his bound forearms. Not to hold him down, just enough to help Darlo balance himself.

"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

He didn't. He was hard as a rock, and entered Petrel smoothly and pushed steadily, and he felt it spreading through him,  _impatience_ as his body stretched, discomfort that carried pleasure not far behind, and then _need_ , in his _cock_ , because _fuck_ , he couldn't even rub against the mattress in this position.

_You're fucked, kiddo._

_Yeah._

  
It felt so good to acknowledge, to surrender to. The guy was just going to use him, and no one cared how he felt. He pushed himself under, and it was so good out there, he could just live there. He didn't need slutty clothes or pick-up lines; they could just tie him down and charge people to fuck him, as long as he could stay high forever on the drugs his own brain manufactured, until he fucking starved into nothing.

 

Darlo's hand pulled away and his smooth, nearly hairless body pressed up against his ass, and he stopped to let Petrel relax, to let them throb together, whispering those quiet reassurances. When he started moving, it was gentle at first. His breath was sharp, but quiet, like he was really trying not to wake him.

He let his weight down, his hand moved to Petrel's shoulder, and he thrust a little harder, whispering, "Fuck, man, you feel so good. Gotta get _into_ you, man, gotta get deeper."

 _You can wake up, now_ , he meant. But what did he want to see? Groggy and dreamy? Confused? Scared? _Helpless_ was what he wanted to feel, wanted to show.

 _Those people are actors_ , he'd said. Well, how many of them had spent the last few years of their lives in galactic espionage? He could act. He could be an excellent actor when he tried. And helplessness came so easily...

A sharper thrust, and he gasped and snapped his eyes open. He looked over his shoulder, _What are you doing to me?_

It was convincing, because Darlo actually stopped, and his face showed concern: _You know where you are, right?_

Exhale: _Oh, thank the stars, it's you._

A tilt of the chin: _You still into this?_

A slow, wicked grin: _Yeah, fuck me up._

Wicked wasn't really in Darlo's repertoire, but his answering grin was playful enough. He tugged up on Petrel's hips and shoved in deeper.

 

After a few minutes he paused, looking mischievous. He grasped Petrel's ankle and bounced his eyebrows. _Sure_ , he nodded, and Darlo pulled his leg straight up, tipping him onto his side. He kissed Petrel's calf and smiled down, and started moving.

"Ooh."

"Hurt?"

"A little."

"Want me to stop?"

"No."

He curled up as much as he could, and tried to dive under again. But Darlo was merciful; he had another idea. He nudged himself between Petrel's legs, clearly intending to flip him over.

It was kind of hilarious, the amount of cooperation and coordination it took to make the ostensible manhandling happen. When their eyes met, Darlo's were twinkling in amusement, and it was hard not to laugh. When Petrel was as close to comfortable as he was going to get, Darlo pushed his legs back, leaning over him, eyes narrow, like a veractyl about to strike. He took a couple of nice, slow thrusts, in and out, making sure everything was safely lined up, and then leaned in close, looking Petrel in the eye.

"I like you."

Petrel's nose crinkled up. "I like you, too."

Darlo snuffed a little laugh, one that was a little bit bitter and a little bit arrogant. _Of course you like me,_ it said. _Everyone likes me._

He snapped his hips and buried himself to the hilt; Petrel strangled a whimper in his throat.

"That's more like it," he growled.

Petrel managed an affirmative grunt, and that was all the kid needed to hear. He planted his hands, pinning Petrel's legs back, and got busy.

"That's fucking good, man," he muttered, "yeah, you feel so good."

Petrel panted in response.

"Fuck, you're so _hot_."

"Not as," bounce, "hot as you."

"Your _body_ , fuck."

"Yeah."

His hands moved to Petrel's shoulders, freeing his legs; they dropped around his waist. Petrel held on, crossed his ankles, pulled him close, tried to get some friction for his cock. But Darlo pushed back, leaning back against his legs, showing off his strong core with a few hands-free thrusts.

" _Fuck_."

"You fucking love this, don't you, slut?"

" _Yessir._ "

"Yeah you do, fuck."

"Yeah."

Back on one hand, he went at it fast and steady, well on his way toward orgasm.

"Fucking look at you, you gorgeous motherfucking-"

Petrel preened, showing his throat, his teeth, his eyelashes.

"Sexy fucking... thick-legged fucking... sweet-assed fucking-"

He was rutting in doubletime, now; he was going to come.

"Fucking- ah!"

He stilled, and Petrel could feel his cock twitching inside him. Darlo panted down at him, sweat dripping onto his face. He opened his mouth, licked his lips, and Darlo let him lick the sweat from his forehead, rested the weight of his head against his sucking lips.

"Please," he whispered. Rolled his chin, moving his lips closer to the boy's ear, "Please."

He felt lips against his cheek, breathing, touching, not quite kissing, and then pulling away. Kneeling above him again, Darlo considered him with heavy, tired eyes, as if he were deciding whether he deserved it or not.

"Please?"

He looked down at Petrel's cock, dark against his body, full and screaming with need.

"Please?"

He held up one of the packets of lube. Oh, stars, that sounded like bliss. Three to five seconds of bliss, maybe, but he'd take it.

" _Gods_ , yes."

 

It was bliss, and somehow Darlo, this _kid_ ,  this prostitute, this professional fucking sex-maker, fucking artisan, fucking prodigy with his hand, somehow made it last almost half a minute, while Petrel twisted helplessly between bliss and desperation, before need finally escaped his body, spurting all over his chest, and contentment grew to fill the space where it had been.

 

...

 

The kidskin collar was noticeably worse for wear, stretched and curled.

"Oh, shit. I'll buy you a new one, I promise."

"Nah, no worries."

"No, really. I want to. Just tell me where to go."

"I don't know. It was a gift."

"Oh, _shit_ , Darlo, I'm so sorry!"

"No no no, not like a _special_ gift."

"I... didn't know there was another kind."

"People give me stuff," he shrugged. "Mostly it's just shit I'll never wear, from people I'll never see again."

"Oh. But you said you liked this one?"

"Tell you what. Instead of that. How bout you bring me something  _you'd_ like to wear?"

"Yes,  _Sir_ ," he agreed; this guy had the _best_ ideas.

He laughed and handed Petrel a wad of serviettes, and busied himself choosing a blanket from a chest, looking away while he cleaned up.

 

"You go through a lot of, uh, stuff." Petrel gestured at the flimsiplast sack they had filled with tissues and wrappers and san wipes and tissue-shrouded condoms.

"No water."

"Right. But energy's basically free, so they cycle everything. Makes sense."

Darlo tore one of the tissues and inspected the fibers. "Sometimes I wonder how old those little buggers really are. How much jizz have they soaked up in their time, you know?"

The allegory was obvious, but he betrayed no sense of regret; he looked characteristically amused by the thought.

"Speaking of. How much is a drink of water around here?"

"In the fresher. You gotta swipe your comm. Or a hard chip, if you have one."

"They don't trust the staff with burners, huh?"

"I'm not staff."

"You're not?"

"Nope. I'm just an extraordinarily friendly resident. Possibly rumored to be a _bit_ of a slut."

"Oh. So. Um?"

"What do they get out of it?"

"Yeah."

"Exorbitant fucking rent."

     _Oh. Aha._

"How exorbitant?"

"You don't wanna know."

"Well. I  _do_ , though."

"Tell you what. You keep that day job for now, and we'll talk some more next time."

"Yeah. Okay." That was probably good advice. And it was getting late.

Darlo yawned. "Go wash up. I promised your boss you'd get some sleep."

 

... 

 

It was properly chilly, once the endorphins had started to wear off, and the blanket was welcome. Welcome, but strange. It seemed at once more intimate than it was supposed to be, and less intimate than he wanted it to be. He wanted to kiss Darlo again, so badly, but it wasn't his place to ask.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Mmm?"

"Is this normal?"

Darlo laughed. "You're going to have to be more specific."

"I mean. Do a lot of people... stay over? Like this?"

A pause. A deep breath.

"Not a lot, no. But it's not like, taboo or anything."

"Okay."

"Most people don't want much."

 _Fourteen_ , his brain computed, unasked.

"Or if they want a date, we'll usually go back to their room."

"Why is that?"

Another pause, while Darlo chose his words.

"Mostly for their convenience."

"Makes sense."

"Easier for them to kick you out."

"Do people _do_ that?!"

"Uh. Yeah?"

"That's shitty."

"Whatever."

"Shit, I'm sorry." They'd been having such a good time and he had to go and- "I'll shut up now. Sorry."

"No, it's cool. But don't you need to be up?"

"Yeah, fuck." Less than four hours til dawn; he might just get in two sleep cycles. "I'll try not to wake you up."

"You should. I kinda wanted to give you my comm. If you want."

Oh, he did, very much. But he still hadn't activated his own.

"Okay. I'll make plenty of noise, then."

Darlo chuckled, but he sounded tired, because he surely was; he'd been entertaining Petrel for hours.

"So are you, like," he yawned again, "you a cuddler?"

"Naw, I'm okay. I'm more of a sprawler."

A pause.

"Okay. Then."

His voice sounded dry and hollow; shit, had he been hoping for a yes?

"Get some sleep so your boss won't kill me. Sweet dreams." Darlo patted his arm and turned over, his back to Petrel, and curled up tight, pulling the blanket up to his ears.

_Shit._

"Um. Actually."

A slight shift, _I'm listening_.

"I'll end up sprawling later, but. I like to cuddle for a little while."

"Sure. Whatever you want." Darlo shrugged, failing to sound nonchalant.

Petrel turned, reached out and touched his arm.

"Is this okay?"

"Yeah."

He wrapped his body around Darlo's.

"You okay being the little spoon?"

"Yeah," and there was a bit of a smile in his voice.

He rubbed his nose in the boy's hair. His eyelids were leaden, and he felt himself falling. Falling into... where was that beautiful, peaceful place? The beach, yes, the beach, and the five moons that moved the tides.

 

"It's okay," Darlo whispered into the dark.

There were so many things that might have meant, but the one Petrel wanted was this: he pressed his lips into his hair, and asked, "Is this alright?"

"Yeah."

The sparkling buzz of psychedelic magic had worn off; there was just the quiet, heavy, everyday miracle of being alive at the same time, alive in the same place, alive together.

 

* * *

 


	9. The Fulsome Wretch

* * *

 

A call came in mid-morning from a freighter captain, a strikingly handsome Nautolan. Odi took the call. Petrel couldn't even tell what language they were speaking, but he could tell she was flirting with him.

The ship's HV cargo unit had gone blind. They couldn't exactly drag em into the shop, and they had deadlines to meet. Was there any way the shop could send someone out? Well, Odi was going, _obviously_. She gestured at Petrel, asking if he could go with her.

"I'd be happy to, but, I mean, a heavy's vocabulary's pretty limited. You really need me?"

"She wants to treat Captain Basstiss right. Don't ya, killer?"

She growled something warning at him, before trailing off into an attempt at a rational justification. Tank looked a little smug but agreed. The babbler unit the crew relied on for translation was _insufferable_ , he said.

So they packed their lo-fi old luggabeast of a speeder with a new ocular assembly, and a rebuilt one they could use for parts. Petrel grabbed a tool apron and a diagnostic display, and happily took the passenger seat. As they left, Tank reminded him not to ask too many questions.

 

* * *

 

They found the crew hauling crates out of the freighter by hand. It looked like miserable work, but anyone whose ocular receptors _were_ functioning could appreciate the sight of sweat-soaked undershirts clinging to bulging muscles. Petrel watched a strapping young Weequay heft his end of a crate into a rented land sled. He felt eyes on him, and turned to find a human guy smirking at him.

He winced in embarrassment, but the guy just turned and looked his friend over the same way. He nodded back at Petrel. _Yeah, that is a nice view, isn't it?_ They grinned at one another, and Petrel turned away to see if the captain could tell him anything about the job.

 

The handsome captain spoke enough Basic to give a summary: the unit had had its 10,000 hour service within the last month, but the problem had just started, somewhere between their last port of call and this one.

He ran through a few questions: _Can you see anything? How many fingers am I holding up? When did this start?_

The HV answered with a timestamp. They compared it to the flight log; it was less than half an hour after landing. Probably not a coincidence.

"Would that be... about when y'all opened the hatch?"

"Ey see in dark," the guy frowned, as if Petrel were the dumbest excuse for a tech he'd ever met.

"Okay," he held up his palm, placating. "When was this service, exactly?"

Twelve standard cycles ago, according to the HV. Petrel gestured to the Nautolan's thin linen caftan, doing a poor job of protecting the guy's amphibious flesh.

"Pretty toasty here, on Tatooine."

Basstiss grunted miserably.

"When's the last time you were someplace this brutal?"

The guy grunted again, warning this time.

"Not  _where._ Just if. The unit been anywhere this bad since that service?"

Basstiss scanned the log, muttering to himself. No, he concluded.

Petrel screwed off the droid's lens cover, and then the one from the new assembly. He held them up side by side. They were visibly different. Micropolarization gave the new one a rainbow shimmer, while the old one just looked like ordinary transparasteel, like a piece of high-end barware.

The captain swore.

"Probably fried every sensor in there the second that hatch opened."

He swore again.

"Sorry, man. Maybe you can try to get your credits back or something."

He barked out a few other things he'd be doing to the guy that had ripped him off. Odoli said something saucy, like  _You should have just come here in the first place_. He calmed down and agreed with her,  _You're right, I should have._

"You good?" he asked Petrel, waving at the new assembly he'd brought.

"Oh yeah. This'll only take about twenty minutes."

"Nono. Take you time. Really." He took Odi's hand, and they sauntered off into the freighter together.

_Damn. Good for her._

 

...

 

"Figure it out?"

It was the guy that had smiled at him, dripping in sweat.

"Yeah. Easy. You guys can probably knock off, save yourselves the trouble." He looked up from the neat little row of connectors he was pulling. The guy met his eyes and took a long swig of water; Petrel watched him swallow. "Not that I mind watching you work."

"You mind me watching _you_ work?"

He chuckled. "What, this boring stuff?"

"I mean, the way you talk to em. It's... kinda cute."

He smiled to himself.

"Not that we don't love ya, too, Six. I swear, we'll never take you for granted again."

"Ey's actually offline right now," Petrel laughed.

"Well, shit. Don't tell em I got so sentimental."

_You should tell em yourself, ya lug._

"I'm Petrel," he held out his hand.

"Tender."

He scanned the guy's boxer's physique, his scruffy chin, the weapons he kept strapped to his body even for the backbreaking work of hauling cargo by hand, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Not that kind of tender," he laughed.

Petrel looked around the freighter that he'd been given to believe was a pirate vessel, and guessed that it probably wasn't a family name, either, but he left well enough alone, and his new pal stayed to watch while he installed the new assembly.

"All right, Tender. Let's see if I'm as smart as I want you to think I am." He powered on the heavy. Ey went through a few self-test cycles before the ready indicator came on.

"Hey, Six. How ya doing?"

<"How I do what?">

"I mean, can you see?"

<"Yes.">

"Ya-hey!" Tender whooped.

"Just a minute." He pulled the ocular diagnostic out of his toolbag. The screen cycled through a range of frequencies, some visible to the two humans and some appearing as a blank screen. The HV confirmed each one. Then it ran through the numbers and alphabet, which the unit also confirmed.

"One last thing. How many fingers am I holding up?"

<"Two.">

"And now?"

<"Four.">

"Perfect. You're good to go, buddy."

The heavy blinked silently, waiting for instructions. Petrel leaned against a crate and looked at the guy that was definitely flirting with him.

"Hope you guys aren't too far behind schedule."

"Me too. I was hoping to have a little time in town, later."

Petrel slouched against the crate, looking available.

"I was actually, uh," the guy started.

"Mm-hmm?"

"Was gonna ask you if you knew anyplace nice in town. Nice-ish, anyway. Every time we come here, I seem to end up in the wrong place."

"I actually haven't been here long. Still looking for that nice-ish place myself."

Tender's palm turned out, an open gesture that said, _well, do you think maybe, you might wanna..._

"Go on," Petrel encouraged him.

"Ah, ha. I, uh, feel like I should buy you a drink or something, for being so nice to Six."

"And here I was hoping you'd buy me a drink for being so handsome and charming."

"Handsome and charming it is," Tender grinned.

 

* * *

 

He could barely contain himself until they were out of earshot.

"Ohmigods did you guys just _do it?!_ "

She hissed at him and commed in to Tank. _Sure_ , he agreed to whatever she'd asked.

"Pechel. Lungch."

"Oh. Sure. We going to one of those tea rooms?"

"Gha."

"But did you guys _do_ it?"

She just made a soft, satisfied little sigh.

"Yess! He was fucking _smokin_ hot. Girl, tell me all about it!"

She burbled wistfully, but of course he didn't understand.

 

* * *

 

 

She led him to a blessedly cool, quiet tea room. Meesil was there, and the two fell into a booth together, giggling close in one another's ears. Petrel nodded to the other two friends- a Trandoshan man and a Keshian woman- but they were deeply absorbed in a violent holo game and didn't even notice him.

Eventually they exploded in clouds of bloodspray, rested their eyes on the ceiling for a moment, and flipped up their earpieces. Only then did the conversation turn to Petrel. The two gamers spoke fluent Basic, and they asked him to confirm everything Meesil said about him: he was new in town, he was some kind of droid whisperer, and he'd been here a week and had a date already.

"I don't know if _date_ is the word. They're only in port for the cycle."

"What ship?"

"The _Fulsome Wretch_?"

"Oh! Is that what you two are giggling about over there? Captain Sexypants?"

Odi squeaked into Meesil's shoulder.

"Your date good looking, too?"

"He's alright. But the captain is... a _very_ good-looking man."

He was, they enthused collectively.

He really, _really_ wanted to press Odi for more details, but she didn't seem to want to share with the other two, so he bit his tongue.

 

When the shallowest introductions had fallen off, Petrel excused himself to look at the tea selection, not daring to hope that he might be able to recreate something like Mme Salas' prescription for Poe.

They did indeed have a wide selection of exotic and medicinal herbs, in addition to tastier blends. He let his eyes skim over the menu, hoping to recognize something. There were descriptions, but they were brief, with parenthetical notes for different species and a few bold warnings.

He picked out a root that was listed as a liver tonic for humans. A mallow that soothed the stomach as well as the throat. A shade flower that was supposed to be calming. Blue arrow-wort was on the menu, screaming with warnings. But he'd used it before, so he checked it off and asked for only a quarter of the proportion of the other herbs. The monger didn't bat an eye at the request.

She made him watch as she measured out the ingredients. If he wanted it processed into sachets, he'd have to wait, but it would be done before lunch was over. He signed off on the order and went back to the table with the others.

 

They were all in the middle of games, now, so he flicked on a console and scrolled through the net. To his surprise, _Teen Style_ popped up as a recommended channel. Recalling Tana's endorsement, he figured, what the hell, why not?

The top segment wasn't about teens or style, but about the current session of the Galactic Senate.

_Really._

Well, it was partly about style, because in between highly colloquial and _outraged_ coverage of subcommittee votes, the two teen hosts skewered the members' outfits. Like, just lacerated them. He found himself laughing at the puffed up politicians, including one that he'd actually _met_ and knew for a fact was a narcissistic prick.

Sure, Poe and his friends had been pretty good at seeing through those fuckers, but humor in the ranks ran towards a kind of sarcastic decorum. These kids, though, were merciless. And so fucking funny. How the hell had he never seen this shit before?

 

The server brought his tea order, thirty finely ground instasachets. She paused to watch over his shoulder.

"Shit look heavy," she gurgled, pointing at a virtual curtain of jewels spilling down one senator's chest.

"Only if they're real."

"Ungg. Betchu right. Lyin-ass motherfuckers."

 

He browsed around the stories. Fashion pieces were interspersed with health tips, discussions of interspecies dating, profiles of young artists, and generally scathing opinions of the Centrist agenda. Connix would _love_ this.

 

And then he went numb, caught by a headline:

 

 

_**They Wanted to Make Me a Stormtrooper** _

 

He stared for a long time, finally pulling his earpiece out before swiping on the article. Lunch was almost over and he didn't have time to have a kriffing meltdown. He'd watch it again later with sound; for now he was just transfixed by the subject. A young woman with a bulky, cheap-looking monocular implant, and a patch over the other eye. It was hard to tell how old she was; maybe in her twenties. She could easily be about the same age as the brave, kind defector he'd escaped with.

The _Teen Style_ team had given her a makeover, it looked like. Her hair was piled high, and she wore bright green lipstick with a white stripe across the center, and a white dress blooming with spidery green chrysanthemums. Only when he blinked did he realize that it suggested the inverse of the First Order's emblem.

He felt tears brimming, threatening to overtop his eyelids. He'd been crying so much, these last couple of weeks, that he'd gotten pretty adept at being inconspicuous about it.  He rubbed his eyes like they were just tired, adding a yawn for good measure.

He cried all the time these days; that's just who he was now. But this? Those fucking chrysanthemums would make anyone weep.

 

They had to see this, didn't they? Maybe this story on its own wasn't credible enough, and maybe Finn on his own wouldn't change anyone's minds, but together, maybe... Was this the proof the Senate claimed didn't exist? And why was it _here_? Why wasn't this splashed all over the net?

The wise and silent observer on his left hand reminded him that this wasn't his fight.

The empty spot on his right hand asked who had said anything about fighting.

Was the source even credible, the sand petrel asked?

Maybe not. Maybe it was bullshit. He'd have to watch the whole thing, first. And he couldn't send it from here, anyway; he had to check into a secure terminal. It would have to wait til lunch tomorrow. Maybe, if he was really lucky, the story would have more traction by then, and he wouldn't have to do anything.

It was important information, but not particularly urgent. Not so urgent that it couldn't wait a single cycle.

 

* * *

 

 


	10. Tender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our hero wants to look his best for his date.

* * *

 

"Sooo. How was Captain Handsome?"

Odi answered with something about _Pechel_.

"Really." Tank looked impressed. "With who?"

"Tender?"

"Oh yeah. He's a good enough guy."

"Hope so. He actually seemed kind of shy."

"By the prevailing community standards," Tank waved toward the street, "I suppose he is."

"But the _important_ thing is," Petrel wanted to know, "what were you and Captain Handsome doing in there?"

She sort of squeaked, burying her face against the wall. She murmured and snickered softly into the stone.

"Okay, okay, we don't need details-"

"YES WE DO."

"No-"

"Fine, just the basics! Vertical or horizontal?"

She made the shape of the letter trill with her hands.

"Clothes? No clothes?"

She giggled.

"Hands? Mouths? Tentacles?"

She laughed and shook her head, snatched up the unused parts, and excused herself to the storeroom. He watched her walk away, wiggling her shoulders happily.

"She always like that when she hooks up, or does he just have that effect on people?"

"Seriously? Even _I_ can tell what a sex god that fucker is."

 

They sort of settled back into the peace of the afternoon. Petrel avoided thinking about the holo waiting for him by pretending to try not to think about his date. Successfully, for the most part, getting lost in the mundane work and then suddenly remembering that the only nice place he knew was the Moff. And he certainly wasn't going to bring another dude there. Not when he had a "date" there next week.

 

Tank paused by the wash station on his way to one of the cupboards.

"I was talking to Niner, while you guys were out."

"Ey say anything?"

"Nope. But what I was thinking, was. No one knows you here, yet. You could go to the Low Stake, scope it out, play some of those games. Then you'd have something to talk to em about. Something ey's interested in. Might, you know, spark something in there."

"Oh, buddy, that's brilliant!"

"Well, thanks."

"Is it, by any chance, the kind of place you might call _nice-ish_?"

"Not the worst place around."

"Do they have rooms there?"

Tank sighed and went back to his task.

 

They set up the fluid cyclers together at the end of the day, and told Petrel to go ahead and clean up for his date. He used their comm to hail the ship and tell Tender where to meet him. Then he asked Niner if ey had any tips for him playing the slots. The indicator just pulsed at the same implacably slow rate.

 

As he made for the door, Tank sang out, "Don't forget your chewsticks!"

 

* * *

 

To his surprise, there were actually other people back at the hostel. A nice, polite couple, about his age. They were sitting with Gram in the common room.

"Petrel, that's a pretty name," the wife cooed.

He showed them the signet on his left hand, and explained that it was his sun sign. From where, they asked? Oh, Socorro, they'd heard great things about Socorro. He encouraged them to visit in the vaguest terms possible: _Well, you really need to discover it for yourself, it's full of surprises_.

"Ooh, what are those?" She pointed at the slippers in his hand.

He held them out, and she fondled them and sighed, "Ooh, booties!"

_Oh, pregnant, are we?_

"Honey, we need to learn how to knit," she said, _very_ seriously.

"Of course," the husband agreed.

"Are y'all expecting?"

She turned to the husband, who smiled tightly, "Hopefully soon."

"Well, good luck. I'm sure you guys will be great parents."

"Thank you." She let go of the slippers with undisguised wistfulness.

 

* * *

 

He had two of the slutty little tops left, and he couldn't pretend he wasn't a little triggered by wearing one out again, after the last time. But there was a saying, about the best way to get over something. So. After a thorough sonic, and walking through a mist of flower essence, he slipped it over his shoulders. He hoped it worked with regular work trousers; there were no mirrors in the hostel.

He fingered a little flower oil into his hair again, vowing to find some surface to check himself out in on the way. Made sure there was lube in his jacket pocket, and strolled out into the evening.

 

* * *

 

Even with the jacket on, he got attention. It was maybe a twenty minute walk to the casino, and he counted one whistle, a couple of soft greetings along the lines of _hey you, where you going, whatchu up to_ , and one honest-to-gods proposition, a quiet  _working?_   He shook his head sharply without breaking stride. It was promising, but also kind of scary, and by the time he reached the casino the jacket was fastened most of the way up.

 

Once inside, he stood out less; plenty of people here were dressed to party. But Tender confirmed that his outfit had signaled something on the street.

"You walked here? How many times you get hit on?"

"A few. Is this too much for around here?"

"Mmh. Not too much for _me_. People might think I'm paying for your company, though."

Oh, that was _very_ promising.

"Shit, I'm sorry, I just wanted to look nice."

"Oh, you do look nice, buddy. You look _great_."

"Thanks. I guess they tend toward modesty around here."

"Yeah. But you do whatever you want. I'm a fucking courier, dude. I spend more time with girls than I do with-" he waved his hand at Petrel, "sexy, bot-genius mechanics."

"Whoa, first of all, there's just as many bot-genius girls as guys."

"You know what I mean."

Petrel didn't, but didn't want to start the date with an argument, especially since they were regular customers, so he pushed down his irritation and turned back to common ground.

"Well, that was hardly a genius-level job. I mean, this is probably a dumb thing to ask, since it's my livelihood and all, but couldn't you guys have figured that out yourselves?"

"Eventually, probably. But, you know, it takes time, and you don't want to fuck something up and make it worse. It's just easier to leave it to the experts."

He understood. Even pilots that were practically married to their ships generally deferred to ground crew.

 

Petrel bought the second round, when the server came around.

"So, your boss and my boss, huh?"

"Oh yeah. He loves Ms. Odoli."

"Really? They're a regular thing?"

"Well, Cap has a lot of regular things, if you know what I mean."

"A berth in every port, huh?"

"Yeah, I mean, look at the guy. But he likes her a lot."

"They only spent like twenty minutes together."

"You do realize, they're boning each other raw as we speak?"

"Oh! No. I tried to get deets out of her but she just... giggled a lot."

"He doesn't talk much, either. He's real classy that way. But yeah, they're a thing. She's got a girlfriend, too."

"Meesil, yeah. She's nice."

"Yeah. They're all together right now. They got those shapely, scaly legs all wrapped around his head, with his junk all up in their junk, and their suckers all stuck to his big fucking schlong, just a big ol' coldblooded sexball."

"You sound a little jealous."

"I gotta work for guy, man. He's not into guys, like, at all. But godsdamn." Tender shook his head. "Sometimes I like to think... like maybe if he got high enough one time. He'd probably kill me after, but I'd risk it."

"Huh."

"You don't see that?"

"Oh, yeah, he's totally hot. Ten-ten, would do. For sure."

"Do you think Ms. Odoli's hot?"

"Ew, she's my boss."

Tender held his hands out incredulously.

"I mean, she's objectively... easy to look at? And she's funny, like I can't even understand her but I still know when she lands a good one, you know?"

"Wait, you don't know Rodian?"

"I'm picking up some words. And how is that any worse than a whole _crew_ not having one babno user among them?"

"Point, good point. Binary's more useful. But it's fucking _hard_."

"That's what they say. I guess I'm lucky; I just grew up with it."

 

He knew that most people didn't have the same kind of relationships with their labor droids that fighter pilots did with their astromechs. In fact, the prevailing ignorance was something Threepio and Black Squadron often exploited. But hell, droids were responsible for the majority of the galactic economy. These guys could  _try_ , at least.

"I could teach you a few things."

"I bet you could."

"I meant in binary."

Tender seemed on the verge of dragging that further into double entendre, but he stopped.

"Actually, yeah. Like, what's the most important thing I need to know? How could we have figured out Six's thing ourselves?"

They talked through it, and Petrel admitted that Six's vocab was so limited that he'd had to ask leading questions. Questions that the crew would have been loath to ask, because no one wanted to be the one to discover that they'd been ripped off.

"When you say eir vocab is limited. Does that mean ey knows things ey can't say? Because that sounds like it would _suck_."

"How deep you want me to get?"

Tender bounced his eyebrows suggestively.

"We need a new round before we get into this."

 

Okay, Petrel sighed, over fresh drinks. In the process of building artificial intelligences, some very interesting things had been discovered about organic intelligence. One curious thing concerned language. Early AIs, those built primarily as robust logic units, were able to recognize patterns and "learn" at the level of, say, birds or mice. But AIs given massive vocabularies were more likely to infer and connect things that they had never been taught. From this, it had been suggested that linguistic capacity preceded abstract thought in organics, too.

Tender blinked at him.

"Like, our ancestors, millions of years ago. We imagine that they invented things first and then came up with the words to describe them."

"Well, yeah."

"But what AI development suggests is that maybe the capacity, like the _physical_ brain capacity for language, came first, and then we were compelled to realize the abstract ideas suggested by combining placeholders. Which aren't always words, but... well, let's just say _words_."

"Huh?"

"Like, have you ever met a nerf?"

"Never had the pleasure."

"Or a blurrg?"

"I've met jerbas."

"Okay. So imagine a jerba, hanging out in its pasture, munching on nutgrass and soleweed. There's birds flying overhead. Do you think the jerba ever looks up and thinks, _I wish I could fly_?"

"Uh, no? I dunno."

"But did you, as a kid, ever look up at birds and wish you could fly?"

"Of course."

"The hypothesis is, that you first need words- or some kind of markers- for the concepts of _myself_ and _flight_ before you can have the thought, _I wish I could fly_."

Tender was sort of staring over his shoulder. Was it an enlightened kind of stare, or was he just wishing he was part of the reptilian/amphibian sexball instead of being here with this nerd?

"Sorry."

"No," Tender blinked at him. "No. I just, actually feel kinda high right now. That's fucking cool."

They drank quietly while the guy wrapped his head around all that. When he'd drained his glass, he looked up, _want another one_?

"Actually. You know anything about autoslots?"

"Ha. I know they're rigged. And there's no skill involved. It _should_ be boring."

"True," Petrel shrugged.

"I know all that, and I play 'em anyway. Why, you wanna go a few rounds?"

"Yeah, let's."

...

 

Tender finally got a modest little payout. He waggled the chip at Petrel.

"We could blow this on playing these things for another hour. Or..."

"Or?"

"I think this would just about cover a room here."

"Sweet. Your treat, then."

 

* * *

 

The concierge looked him up and down intently. He greeted her with a smile, but she just nodded sharply and turned all her attention to Tender.

"How long you staying?"

"The night, please."

He paid with the winnings. She handed him a card, and then she turned to Petrel, frowning.

"You know how to reach me, if you need anything?"

"I don't think we'll be needing anything. But thanks."

She looked _even more_ displeased, glaring at Tender and cutting her eyes toward the stairwell. He nodded obediently, practically a salute, and walked away.

 

Wait, did she actually... did she actually think he was...

"I'm flattered," he chuckled, "but it's just a date."

"Uh-huh. You new here?"

"Kind of. I'm a mechanic." _At Carnock's on Tiure Ave_ , he wanted to add, to corroborate. But of course he couldn't, on account of the very expensive and very damaged piece of the casino's property currently residing there. "We're just here on a date. Ask him," he nodded in Tender's direction.

"Oh, I'll ask, alright." She glanced at the holo switchboard around her.

He put up his hands in surrender- was he supposed to wait while she called security or something? But she just rolled her eyes, and dismissed him with a flick of her hand that clearly said, _Well, go on, don't keep him waiting_.

 

* * *

 

"Fuck's sake, it's _just a kriffing shirt_!"

"It's okay, man."

"And why does she care? It's not like it's illegal!"

"I don't think she cares about the _law_. I think she was looking for a cut."

"Oh." Petrel deflated. "I guess that makes sense."

"Don't worry about it, man."

 _Easy for you to say_ , he thought. He wanted to be mad at the guy for not backing him up, but there was nothing he could have done. Arguing with the house was a losing battle in any establishment.

Tender hung his jacket, and touched Petrel's arm lightly, asking for his jacket, too. But the last thing he wanted was to take it off right now. His fingers curled self-consciously at the hems.

"You're not _insulted_ , are you?" Tender asked, looking somewhat offended himself.

"No. Course not."

"There's nothing wrong with it. Some of my favorite people in the whole galaxy work."

"I know. Like, half the people I know are- working." He didn't need to clarify that by _half_ , he meant that he knew five people on the whole freaking planet, and two of them were prostitutes.

"You really do look nice," Tender said. There was warmth in his voice, a peace offering. He curled his fingers around Petrel's and gently pulled them away.

_Stop being such a child. The guy's here for a reason._

The irony of that thought dropped into his stomach like a stone.

"Sorry. I was just- afraid she was gonna kick me out, is all."

"Well, I woulda gone with you."

"Ha, I hope so."

The man's fingers were playing over the leather, now. Not quite demanding, but plain enough in their intent.

_Just go with it, asshole._

_Just go with it._

He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

"I'm sorry. Sorry if I'm acting like a, a prude, or something. That's just... never happened before."

"Shit." The fingers paused, then came to rest on the hems, the same spot that his own had been rubbing nervously. "You're not. I'm just an asshole, I-"

"No, you're great!"

"No, Pet. Honestly. I don't get with a lot of guys like you."

"Like me?"

"You know. Smart. Normal. Straight."

He laughed out loud. A deserter twice over, a murderer, living on stolen credits, holding down a job he didn't need because the nice lady at the first brothel he'd stumbled into had told him to. Yeah, straight as a fucking arrow.

"That's me, alright. I just came to Tatooine to work on my tan."

"Hey, that's all anyone's here for, right?" Tender smiled at him, looking hopeful that they'd broken through the awkwardness between them. His hand moved to Petrel's cheek.

"You're really beautiful."

"Pretty cute yourself." He scritched his fingertips through the guy's short, scruffy beard. Kriff, he didn't even have  _nails._ What was she thinking?

Tender leaned down, into his ear. "And you're so smart," he murmured. "I never knew what a turn-on that could be."

 

[Poe had always thought of himself as _skilled_ , rather than smart. Obviously, it took a sharp mind to do what he did, but that also meant he was surrounded by a lot of other very smart people. People he considered smarter than himself, for the most part. And compliments to his intelligence almost inevitably led to getting  _Men_  stuck in his head, Cherie's smug polemic against the titular beings:

_They tell me_

_They tell me that they love me_

_Love me for my miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind_

She would hold the syllable impossibly long, her head thrown back, while her hips swung in obscene gyrations.]

 

And Petrel? Petrel was tired of feeling like a green-horned Force-damned fool on this planet. He took the praise. He let the hook in his mind move him. He rubbed their hips together; he dropped his shoulders and pulled his hands away from the man's body long enough to shrug the jacket off. Tender caught it before it hit the floor, a classy move. He cast about for someplace within reach to hang it, and ended up just tossing it onto the bed.

"Good move. I've got _necessities_ in there."

" _Hnng_. See what I mean? _Smart_."

He pulled Tender down and kissed him, going for _enthusiastic first kiss_ , lips dragging together and smacking gently, over and over. He pulled away, looking for a reaction. The reaction was hungry teeth, glinting eyes, strong legs walking him backwards, up against the wall.

He wrapped his hand around Tender's neck and pulled him in harder, kissed him again, aggressively, pushing his mouth open, taking inventory of his teeth, letting his own teeth claim his lips, pushing their bodies together, and Tender nudged his knee between his legs and pressed his thigh up into his crotch, and he rode it, grinding his cock against a _substantial_ fucking piece of meat.

He pulled away, breathing heavy, now, and scanned his date's face; he was satisfactorily starry-eyed. The man's fingers twisted gently in the fabric of the slutty shirt, offering to help him out of it; it wasn't the kind of thing you could just tear off without damaging.

"You really think it looks good on me?"

Tender nodded with wide, sincere eyes. Petrel smiled back at him, his confidence restored.

"Well, then. Leave it on."

 

 

* * *

 

He had the impression that _something_ had woken him up. But Tender was stretched out, snoring softly. Maybe the snoring had woken him? If so, that was new, too.

 

_Bzzzzzzt_

 

Ah. The guy's comm. Petrel rolled over and pushed his face into his arm.

 

_Bzzzzzzt_

 

Tender grunted and shifted. The snoring stopped for a few breaths, and started again.

 

_Bzzzzzzt_

 

A snort, and the stillness of someone startled awake. He seemed to listen for a moment, and snuggled back down into his pillow.

 

_Bzzzzzzt_

 

"Shit."

 

There was rustling as he reached for the comm, and then the room was bathed in pale blue light.

"The fuck, man?" he slurred, sleepily.

"Sorry, Ten. Pull your dick out of that-"

"Hey! Watch it! The fuck do you want?"

"Need you down here. We gotta move. Gotta make the drop, uh, elsewhere."

"Elsewhere? The fuck, what's wrong with Maz's?"

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I don't usually do cliffhangers. But I also don't do 10k chapters.


	11. One Word

* * *

 

Petrel lay perfectly still, and tried to breathe evenly. It was probably nothing. They were pirates, after all. If they had business somewhere, beefs were likely to follow. And Maz was famously intolerant of beefs in her joint.

 

"You didn't hear?" the projection asked.

"Didn't hear what?"

"Fucking Order tried to raid the place."

_Oh, shit._

"Get the fuck out. What were they after?"

Was it him? Were they looking for _him_?

"Place is a fucking mess, shot to shit."

"Damn."

"Yeah. She's diverting everyone who's not there to help with, like, cleanup and shit."

"You tellin' me Cap didn't volunteer us for that? Sounds right up his alley."

"Right up _her_ alley, you mean."

"Aw, gross, man."

"You know he'll have us out there hauling rubble soon enough. But right now we gotta move the cargo, so, you know-"

_Wait! Who were they after?!_

"The fuck were they after?"

"Something about a bounty on a droid, is what I heard."

 

His heart stopped.

 

"Oh, for fuck's sake. A fucking droid? And now we gotta-" Tender exhaled a lungful of exasperation.

"So you also didn't hear."

"Didn't. Hear. _Whatt_?" he gritted, increasingly irritated.

"Organa's people. Came outta hiding to drive them off."

_No._

No, he was fucking dreaming.

 

"No shit?"

"Yeah, shit."

"This is how it's gonna start? Over a fucking droid?"

"Watch your fucking history, dipshit."

Tender groaned.

"So wipe your dick off and get down here."

"Fuck."

He cut the connection, rolled over, and grumbled into the pillow.

 

Petrel lay frozen, praying to wake up from this terrible dream. But he heard Tender groan miserably and haul himself up and into the fresher. And then another terrible thought occurred to him: he'd been planning to ask to borrow the man's undershirt to walk home in.

He had maybe thirty seconds. He jumped out of bed and scanned the floor until he found it. Hiding it under his pillow was too obvious; he stuffed it down near his feet, where it could plausibly have migrated on its own, in case the guy insisted on finding it. He resumed his sleeping position and took a few deep breaths, tried to empty his mind and calm his pulse.

 

He heard the guy dressing in the dark. It was obvious when he got to the point where he couldn't find his undershirt; he moved around, looking under the bed, swearing very softly under his breath.

Petrel had mixed feelings about how quiet he was trying to be. On the one hand, he sure as fuck didn't want to talk to anyone right now, didn't want anyone to see the alarm on his face. On the other hand, he'd never had a date run out on him before.

Tender gave up on it and finished dressing, strapping his weapons back on, pulling on his jacket. And then, instead of just slipping out the door, he knelt beside the bed.

" _Hey, Pet_ ," he whispered.

"Hhuhh?" He groaned into his arm.

"Petrel. Sorry to wake you up, man."

He was just alarmed by the guy's departure; that was perfectly natural, right? He moved his arm and blinked into Tender's face, took in the fact that he was fully dressed.

"Shit, what time is it?"

"It's okay; it's like the middle of the night."

"Oh, phew, I thought I was late for- wait, you going somewhere?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry-"

"Fuck." He turned his head away.

"No, no, listen. It's an emergency."

"Uh-huh. Whatever."

"No, really. I wish I didn't have to. I had a really good time with you."

"Yeah, I thought so too."

Tender touched his shoulder, massaging it a little.

"I'm really sorry. I don't want to go, I swear. Wish I could stay here with you for a few more hours."

He sounded _unbearably_ sincere. Petrel might have relented even if he hadn't overheard the conversation. He reached out his hand behind him; Tender held it and kissed it.

"I mean it. I was hoping to see you again, next time we're here. I understand if you're mad, if you don't wanna."

_Aw, kriff._

He rolled over, frowning at the pirate, trying to look dubious, rather than freaked out.

"You mean it?"

"Yeah. Really."

"Well." He pursed his lips, as if he were just now starting to believe the guy. "You know where to find me."

"Yeah?" Tender's eyebrows went up. "Would that be okay?"

"Sure." He squeezed then man's hand. "I hope your... thing isn't anything dangerous."

Tender looked like he was actually considering telling him that a war was about to start. He squeezed their hands again and tried to smile.

"No more than usual, right?"

"I wouldn't know. Danger isn't really my province."

"You know. Life's a wretch and then you die."

"Is _that_ how that goes?"

"Ship's motto."

"Hm." Petrel pulled their hands to him and kissed Tender's knuckles.

"Kiss me for luck?"

"Sure."

It was short and shallow and sweet, and the pirate betrayed none of his worries.

"See you next time?"

"Next time," he agreed, and let go of the man's hand. He mirrored the parting wave offered by the silhouette in the doorway, and the door closed.

 

He counted the man's steps: down the hallway, down the stairs. Past the concierge- she was really going to be suspicious, now. Through the casino, out the entrance onto Jinn Street.

He rolled over, naked and supine, and gave panic and dismay free run of his face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He needed to find a secure terminal. He wasn't about to ask directions of the concierge; he walked past without even looking at her. Instead he made for the cashier, at the other end of the casino.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He checked himself into the terminal, paying up front for a full cycle. He swore to himself that if he didn't get a response after a day, he'd leave and not look back. Still, he could picture himself feeding credits into the console, day after day; the cleaning crew finding his starved, dehydrated body.

He pulled up the _Teen Style_ piece, first. He hadn't watched it yet, but it wouldn't hurt to send. What hurt was typing in one of the two addresses that were written on his heart, the ones that had failed to obliterate themselves like they should have, when everything happened.

What hurt were all the thoughts beating against his skull, the ones he wouldn't ask:

_Did we lose anyone?_

_Is Bee alright?_

_Tell em I'm so sorry._

_Tell everyone I'm sorry._

_Is Finn alright?_

_Is he fitting in, are people being nice to him?_

_Did you get it?_

_Is there hope?_

_I'm so sorry._

_I love you._

 

In the end, it was all he could do to type in:

_< Do you have it?  >_

 

He didn't even add _May the Force be with you_ , because it sounded like good-bye, and he desperately wanted an answer. He selected the highest level of encryption, using Poe's key as a checksum. His finger hovered over [TRANSMIT], and he felt his lungs burning; he'd forgotten how to breathe about a minute ago. He pressed it, and black spots danced around his vision as he watched a row of blinking lights turn solid, one by one, as layers of encryption merged.

He strained to focus his narrowing vision on the last indicator, a ping from the next relay. He had the presence of mind to lower himself down to the floor so he wouldn't hit his head, and when the light turned from red to blue, the blackness closed in.

 

...

 

There were depressions worn into the sandstone floor from the scuffing of thousands of feet. There was a crack in the wall. An anomaly; most of the blocks were fitted air-tight, the products of long-ago slave labor. He wondered if anything lived in it.

 

...

 

He pulled his jacket off and folded it up as a pillow. Much better.

 

...

 

The lock on the door counted down the time he'd bought, in thin green spokes. He saw another one wink out. He'd been here about four hours, it looked like.

 

...

 

It was after dawn, now. He'd lost his job. His first one ever. The one he didn't really need.

 

...

 

He had to piss. He eyed the crack, but it didn't look like it went anywhere. It would probably just spill back out and soak into his knees. He crushed his bladder into a hard ball of ice.

 

...

 

The console chimed with a cheery _ding!_ It sounded like doom, and he stood to face it. Gingerly, because his bladder was cramping like a motherfucker. The message was longer than he expected, but the first word was all that mattered:

_< Yes.  >_

His knees went weak and he dropped right back down to the floor. Weak, but light, like his body weighed half what it had a moment ago.

 

...

 

_< Yes.  >_

He could die in peace, now.

_< Please come back.  >_

Oh. Maybe they did want the satisfaction of executing him, after all.

_< We love you so much.  >_

His face contorted as he struggled to make sense of the words. He supposed that was how love worked, wasn't it? You could still love someone that had hurt and betrayed you. Maybe you could still love someone even as you and four of your comrades raised your blasters, sighting in his heart.

After all, he was pretty sure she still loved Ben.

_< You did the right thing.  >_

He relaxed as the crisis of cognitive dissonance passed.  _That_ , at least, made sense. He'd done the right thing, spared them the trouble of dealing with him, spared them the fear of-

Of course, that's what they'd be thinking. That Ben might have... _planted_ something in him. In his mind. Something that would make him into a weapon to hurt them. It was so obvious; of course that's what they were thinking. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and thanked the Force for guiding him to do the right thing.

_< May the Force be with you.  >_

Nothing.

And then pain.

Bright, pink, blood-colored pain. In his chest.

 

Good-bye.

It meant good-bye.

 

She was... cutting him loose.

Letting him go.

Setting him free.

 

Once again, blood failed to reach his brain. He just managed to set himself down before his knees turned to rubber. He didn't pass out this time; it hurt too much. In his chest. The proverbial fist-sized muscle was really having a tough time with all this... he couldn't think of a word for it. Just, with _all this_.

He felt it slide between his ribs, and pressed the heel of his palm to the wound instinctively. Sweat prickled at his cheeks. In his elbows, under his arms. The air felt a lot thicker than Tatooine's atmosphere.

The blade twisted in his chest.

It slashed him open, carving out his heart. It had its claws in his neck, too, tearing at veins and tendons. Claws in his arm, grasping his veins and trying to rip them out of his body.

He didn't need to be a medic to know what this was. This was a fucking heart attack. The countdown timer on the door showed eighteen, maybe sixteen hours left, before the lock would release and the light over the door would flick off. Maybe, _maybe_ a san unit would wander in and find him.

 

 _It's okay_ , he told himself. The same thing had happened on the _Finalizer_ , and he'd survived that. At least here, he could sit, with his back pressed to the wall, his knees up and his hand over his heart. But more importantly: it didn't matter. It didn't matter anymore.

He pressed the heel of his palm hard against his chest, and panted into the silent stone carrel.

 

It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was _Yes_.

Someone- no, not just someone- _Finn_ had completed his mission. They had the map. It didn't mean the galaxy was safe, but at least it wasn't facing certain doom.

He'd done his part; he could die here.

 

After all, _it_ had always thought he might die on Tatooine. Not like this, though. He'd imagined his own death countless times, countless ways, and none of them involved a heart attack at the age of thirty-two.

_Twenty-eight._

And then he had to laugh- it came out as a sob, but he knew it was a laugh- he laughed at the irony of a _free being_ dying in a fucking comms carrel, maybe a quarter of the size of the First Order's interrogation cells.

 

He could do something about the pain, at least. If he could do it there, he could do it here. He could go somewhere. Somewhere soft and happy and free of pain...

_Darlo._

Making out with Darlo, floating, dissolving. Nothing mattered; all that mattered was the softness, the sweetness and light, the sparkling touches and _softness..._

His lips moved against one another, falling into the fondest of his new memories, and it came to him, a tide as soft as mist, blanketing the pain. It surged again moments later, attacking with its slashing blades, and ebbed again under the haze of kissing and touching and kissing. The tides moved under a single moon, now, his moon, rising and ebbing in their turns: the pain that wanted to kill him, and blessed softness that made that outcome seem acceptable.

 

...

 

He didn't die.

He came back into himself freezing in the sweat-soaked stolen undershirt. It still hurt, still felt like claws dug into his chest and neck. But they weren't tearing so violently, now, and a warning little tickle spoke up from his urethra. _Drink some fucking water_ , it said, and try to take a piss. He rolled onto his knees and grasped the edge of the console with his right hand. He pulled himself up. He remembered to scrub and reset the terminal. There were maybe fourteen hours left on the lock. He tried to calculate from that what time it was, now, and failed. In his mind, it was dawn.

He made his way down the hall to the fresher with his hand still pressed to his chest. His left hand wasn't much help in getting it out, but he managed, and stood there for a long time, waiting for his bladder to unclench.

 

 _No refunds for unused time_ , the clerk started, when he turned in his card. But he was already on his way out the door.

  

* * *

 

The midday air hit him like the exhaust from an atmo booster. He thought about checking the time, but his left hand really didn't feel like traveling the few inches to present his chrono. He could see plainly enough how short the shadows were. He headed toward the shop, with short, slow steps, to accept his firing with good grace. To thank them for giving him a chance, and maybe to discuss Niner's disposition, if they were in the mood to talk to him at all.

But the shop was closed when he got there. It was a little early for lunch- were they avoiding him? Did they not want to pay him for the time he'd worked? No, that was dumb. Narcissistic and paranoid. Kriff, he needed to lie down. He craned his ear up toward the slits in the wall, listening.

Shit, he hoped they weren't being held up again. He knocked a few more times, and shuffled around the block to the back alley. He peered through the gate to the back lot, where barrels of debris awaited scrap dealers, and where ancient chain-drive lifts led down to solvent tanks, buried away from the suns. The steel slats overlapped; he couldn't see much.

"Odi!" he whispered, to no reply. "Odi! It's me, Petrel! Are you okay?"

The slats were vertical ones, of course, and the wall was topped with razor wire. His boots were knobby enough, and he made half an effort to shimmy himself up. But his left hand could barely wrap itself around one of the bars, let alone hold any weight; he didn't stand a chance of making it.

"Odoli!" he said, louder, but no one answered.

 

 

* * *

 

Gram appeared to be deep in meditation, so he staggered as quietly as he could toward the kitchen. He let a sip of water seep into the membranes in his mouth, and swallowed the warm, viscous result. He did that a few times, drank the rest of the liter in one long guzzle, and refilled the flask.

"THERE YOU ARE!"

He startled at the man's quiet approach and loud voice.

"ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

"Sorry. Didn't mean to disturb you."

"ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

"Yeah."

He wasn't, and it was obvious. He'd sweated like a beast through the worst of the chest pains. He'd soaked his clothes and then they'd dried under the noonday suns. He knew he had to stink.

"THERE'S A MESSAGE FOR YOU."

Great. He was going to get fired in front of his landlord. The icing on the fucking cake. He followed Gram out to the holodisplay. He tried to demur when invited to sit; he didn't need to stink up the guy's furniture. But Gram insisted, so he picked a banthahide chair, because at least he could clean it later. It was made for someone much larger, and he had to climb into it.

 

******************************

> "Hey Pet, hope you're okay."
> 
> Tank's projection looked pointedly at his chrono.
> 
> "I guess the door's gonna be locked when you get here, cause I gotta go out for a call. Hate to close like this, but they're regulars, and. Well. You're not here. And Odi, uh."
> 
> He sighed, looking like he'd given up on trying to understand.
> 
> "Odi, apparently, has run off with Aivela's gift to womankind. To, uh. To rebuild some ancient castle. I know you were with one of his guys, too, but she says you're not with them. So. I hope you're alright."
> 
> His mouth twisted; his forehead creased. It wasn't much of a frown by most people's standards, but it was a lot for Tank.
> 
> "You know what would really help me out, here. Is if you would activate your fucking comm."
> 
> He shook his head.
> 
> "I should be back after lunch. Hope to see ya."

******************************

 

The message ended, and the display shrank down to an amorphous blue blob, a standby indicator. Petrel blinked at it. So... he wasn't fired?

"WHO'D'VE THUNK IT?" Gram chuckled. "ODOLI LEEDI, RUNNING OFF TO WORK WITH MAZ KANATA. DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMING."

Petrel picked at a grain of sand, stuck under a fingernail.

"HELL OF A WOMAN."

"Yeah. I'm gonna miss her."

Gram chuckled again. "Her, too," he said, in his quiet voice. "BUT YOU, SON. YOU LOOK A FRIGHT. WHAT'S WRONG?"

"I'm fine. Just, partied too hard is all. It's my own fault."

"CAN I GET YOU SOMETHING? SOME OF THAT TEA YOU BROUGHT?"

"You have anything here for angina?"

Gram frowned deeply. "LITTLE YOUNG FOR THAT, AREN'T YOU?"

"It's a condition. Runs in the family."

"HMMM." Gram looked him over, looking concerned.

"It's fine. I'm fine."

"YOU KNOW, MEDITATION ISN'T ONLY FOR THE MIND. IT BRINGS THE LIVING BODY INTO BALANCE WITH THE FORCE."

He didn't know how to meditate. What he really wanted was a blanket. He wanted to curl into the Wookiee-sized chair like a child, with a blanket and a mug of homemade spicy wood hen broth, and to watch dumb holos all day with his parents instead of going to ~~school~~ work.

He looked at the standby projection.

His eyes went to the chairs that the not-yet-expecting couple had been sitting in. And then back to the slowly morphing standby blob. He looked at Gram, in his rough monastic robes, and back at the empty chairs. It was funny, the way his brain put things together in moments like this, when his soul felt absent.

 

"Actually, Gram. There's a holo I've been meaning to watch. I think you might find it interesting."

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lest anyone think I'm letting Poe off too easy: [Takotsubo Syndrome](http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/Cardiomyopathy/Is-Broken-Heart-Syndrome-Real_UCM_448547_Article.jsp#mainContent) is rarely fatal.
> 
> (jk I know no one thinks that. The author is a monster.)


	12. Ana

* * *

 

He'd watch the holo on two conditions, Gram said. One, that Petrel let him make him a cup of that tea he'd brought home, the one that was supposed to be calming. And two, that he comm Tank and tell him that he needed to rest and wouldn't be back until the next day. The old man's kindly concern was almost enough to make him feel guilty about the trap he was about to spring.

Almost.

 

****************************

 

> Her name was Ana. She didn't remember much about her homeworld, didn't remember her family at all. The first thing she really remembered was being transported with the other frightened kids. Some had cried and begged, others had yelled and struggled and tried to resist. The new adults told them _it's going to be okay, you're going to a better place_ , in gruff, impatient tones that belied the message.
> 
> They'd figured out she was blind pretty quickly, because her friends were holding her hands and guiding her. They had openly considered spacing her. She'd been barely verbal and had never flown before, and didn't know what that term meant. She'd thought it meant "spacing" her out from the other kids- not letting them touch her. It sounded like the worst thing she could imagine, and she howled and begged them not to.
> 
> The other kids were going to a new, special school, they told her, and it was only for "normal" kids. They would find someplace else for her, someplace nice. But that sounded a lot like "spacing," to her. It was the most awful, heartbreaking moment of her life, being pulled apart from her friends like that; it had felt like she was dying.
> 
> She'd been moved around a series of ships and buildings, through different handlers, who gave her sometimes contradictory instructions as to how to behave if she didn't want to end up _you know where_. She didn't know where _you know where_ was, and didn't ask.
> 
> Eventually she'd been adopted by what turned out to be a truly loving family, the only one she could remember. She didn't really start speaking again until the age of ten. By that point, she'd been living the lie concocted for her by her abductors for years: that she'd been put up by unfit, drug-addled parents, who were tragically but unsurprisingly killed in a speeder bike accident before they ever got their acts together enough to take her back. By the time she started speaking she knew better than to try to correct the record. But she never stopped thinking about her friends and missing them.
> 
> As a teenager, she had begun to watch the news and learn about the crimes plaguing the galaxy. She began to realize that her childhood friends had probably ended up someplace worse than she. Slavery, most likely, or even sexual slavery. Both were outlawed under the New Republic, but both were still practiced in the shadows.
> 
> It was only recently that she had begun to hear the rumours about the massive navy the First Order was building, and realized with sudden dread where they had gotten the personnel to run it.
> 
> Most people thought the rumours were exaggerated, and few believed the pieces she'd puzzled together. They thought she was seeking attention, or grasping for an explanation other than having been abandoned by her birth parents. That she was suffering narcissistic delusions, maybe.
> 
> She didn't imagine many would believe this story, either. But she followed _Teen Style_ , and they were receptive when she reached out to contact them. She was telling her story now for others like herself, for the galaxy at large, and... she paused and looked, pleading, into the lens. She was here in hopes of reaching an audience of one: General Leia Organa of the Resistance.

****************************

 

It was so surreal, Petrel had to wonder if maybe _he_ was the delusional one. He had no doubt he had spent a troubled half-cyle in a comms terminal. But had he really contacted anyone? Or was he just a simple desert mechanic, suddenly losing his mind? Believing he had ties to the Resistance, if such a thing even existed. That's how it started, right? With delusions of grandeur?

He excused himself to the out-back. He didn't have anything to offer it yet; he just needed to stretch his legs and get some air and try to get a fucking _grip_.

 

When he returned, Old Gram was still sitting serenely. Maybe he was innocent. Or maybe it was the manifest benefit of a lifetime of meditation.

Maybe he should try it.

At any rate, there was no reason to come out swinging, so he opened with the least fraught of his questions:

"Was Tank a kid like her?"

"NO," Gram said, without hesitation.

"You sound pretty sure."

"HE WAS RAISED BY THE BDC. THE HOME ON EXODEEN, IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY."

The Bureau of Displaced Children was one of the earliest bureaucracies formed by the fledgling New Republic, even before the Concordance. After the generation of war orphans had aged out, its mission had changed, but it remained a last resort for too many families.

"What does that mean?"

"THERE ARE CERTAIN KINDS THAT DO THE FIRST ORDER'S DIRTY WORK. THERE ARE THE TRUE BELIEVERS,"

Petrel wrinkled his nose at the thought of a certain ex-Imperial agent, the one who had pursued Poe so relentlessly that they joked about him having a crush.

"THEIR OWN TROOPS, OF COURSE,"

Suralinda's footage of the attempted occupation of Spalex played before his mind's eye.

"AND THOSE ALIEN TO DECENCY OR COMPASSION, LOYAL ONLY TO THE CODE OF THE CREDIT STICK."

"The kind of people that murder and kidnap for money, you mean."

"AND THEY DON'T TAKE DETOURS TO DELIVER DEFECTIVE GOODS TO THE NRBDC."

"They didn't shoot Ana. They didn't space her."

"AND THEY DIDN'T BRING HER TO THE BDC, EITHER. THEY SOLD HER TO SOME WEALTHY BLEEDING HEARTS IN THE CORE."

That was his opening; he let fly the punch he had wound up inside him.

"Bleeding hearts like Tyff and Wonalla?" He sneered and jerked his chin at the two empty chairs. He expected some kind of protest, or at least evasion, but Gram's eyes just narrowed, as if _Petrel_ were the suspicious one, here.

"YOU SAID YOURSELF THAT THEY SEEMED LIKE GOOD PARENTS."

"That's just a thing you say to be polite! I hardly met them!"

"THEY'RE VETTED. AND AFFLUENT. THEY'LL GIVE THE BOY A GOOD HOME."

"Gram! Are you fucking nuts! Are you fucking telling me that you _sell_ children, and it doesn't trouble you at _all_?"

Ah, _there_ was the flash of anger he'd expected.

"DO I LOOK LIKE A PROFITEER?" Gram yelled as he gestured around the plain, ascetic space.

"I don't know! Maybe this is just how you prefer-"

"AT LEAST HE'S ALIVE, FOR NOW, WHILE THOSE...CORE WORLD _SAVIOURS_ ," and the sarcasm was clear in his voice," _DITHER_ OVER WHETHER THEY'RE READY FOR A CHILD WITH-" he gritted his teeth, looking truly angry.

"With what?"

Gram just shook his head.

"Kriff, man, he should be under the oversight of the BDC! They have programs, adaptive tech, therapists, all that stuff."

"THE BDC ISN'T IN THE HABIT OF PAYING TWENTY-THOUSAND CREDIT RANSOMS. FOR GOOD REASON."

"Twenty..." His eyes went wide.

"ANA WAS INCREDIBLY LUCKY." Gram gestured at the holo display. "SHE'S PRETTY. SHE'S INTACT. SHE'S _BLIND_. YOU KNOW WHAT SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN WORTH AS A CONCUBINE?"

 

Petrel almost made it back out to the wood-slatted latrine. He threw up in the sand in the courtyard. It was nothing but tea, though, and it sank into the sand like water. The pressure on his diaphragm and the fresh burning in his throat bled into the shredding claws in his neck and chest.

It wasn't that he didn't _know_. It wasn't news to him, that that sort of thing still went on. No, it was the blasé acknowledgment from the self-styled monk that was so disturbing, nauseating. Again, he wondered, _is this just what it's like out here?_

Black Squadron was about the savviest group of operatives in the galaxy, and they were fucking _idiots_. They knew the galaxy was full of avarice and villainy, but they believed -as Poe had, as his mother had- that its people were essentially good.

What were they thinking? What had _he_ been thinking? That they'd stop the Order in its tracks with some miraculous military victory and then... what? Then the Senate would start giving a fuck again? That all the sins that flourished while the Senate looked away would right themselves, that some kind of galactic consciousness would realign itself effortlessly?

Maybe they weren't the last line of defense between peace and a future of unrelenting oppression. Maybe they were just a group of moony-eyed dreamers, playing soldier. They'd be steamrolled by the First Order, and hardly anyone would notice. Life in the Outer Rim would go on as it had, unchanged, uncaring.

 

The old man watched him crawl back into the big chair and curl up unhappily. "Sorry," he muttered.

"THE WAR LEFT MANY WORLDS POISONED FOR GENERATIONS TO COME. AND NOT ALL DEFORMITIES ARE EVIDENT TO THE EYE. THERE ARE GOOD, DECENT FAMILIES THAT CANNOT PROCREATE, FOR ANY NUMBER OF REASONS."

"But you said rewarding criminality encourages it. Isn't that exactly what you do?"

Gram scoffed. "A DROP IN THE OCEAN. A GRAIN IN THE DESERT. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA, THE KIND OF RESOURCES THE FIRST ORDER HAS AT ITS DISPOSAL?"

He nodded, remembering his shock as he was hauled out into the star destroyer's landing bay. He'd admired it, despite himself. The hangar was awesome, gleaming and cavernous, and just one of dozens on the warship. He'd fantasized, for a moment, about what the Resistance could accomplish with such resources, before recognizing the inherent contradiction there.

"You know, people _know_ this is happening. But there's no proof. The Senate investigations have gone nowhere."

Gram laughed again, bitterly. "OF COURSE NOT! THE CENTRISTS ARE PRACTICALLY THE POLITICAL WING OF THE FIRST ORDER. AND THE REST ARE CREDIT-SCRABBLING LITTLE COWARDS WHO'D SELL THEIR OWN MOTHERS FOR A LITTLE MORE POLICING AROUND THEIR HOMEWORLDS."

"But those are the worlds being preyed on! And you know about it! You know who they are! You could prove it; they'd have to believe..."

The rest of his words died under Gram's look of reproach. Because of course, giving up his network would drive them further into the shadows, would preclude future adoptions, leaving slavery or death as the only options. Petrel didn't need it explained to him.

"What about... what she said?"

Gram questioned him with a look.

"About." His throat was dry. "About reaching  _her_. The Senator."

"YOU THINK SHE DOESN'T KNOW?"

He rubbed at his neck, as if he could soothe the grasping claws into releasing their hold on his flesh. He felt Gram's stare, and worried again that he was more sensitive than he let on.

"I, I wouldn't know. Obviously." His hand moved down to massage his elbow, to get some blood moving in his arm. "I guess... I guess I thought she would probably suspect. But never had the proof. Or something. The fuck do I know."

Gram looked dubiously at the holo display. He was right. Proof? From _Teen Style_? No one was going to take this stuff seriously.

"IF ANYONE WILL LISTEN TO THE GIRL, I SUPPOSE SHE WOULD."

"Maybe she'll see it."

"I'M SURE SHE WILL," Gram said, and then repeated it in his quiet voice. "I'm sure she will."

 

What did that mean? Why did he sound so sure? Did he know? Was he reading Petrel's mind? The thought made his head hurt. But it wasn't true. It wasn't true. He was being paranoid; paranoia was one of the symptoms, symptoms of the heart thing. And the stress, and being so alone, and everything, just everything.

As if he'd summoned it, it stabbed his chest again. He heard himself whimpering, and grimaced in embarrassment.

"YOU NEED TO REST, SON."

"I know," he gasped. "I need some more tea."

"GO LIE DOWN. I'LL BRING IT TO YOU."

"Okay." He stood and took a few steps, rubbing his chest.

"CAN YOU MAKE IT UP THE STAIRS?"

"I'll take them slow."

He did; he crawled up them, so dizzy he was afraid he was going to fall. He crawled to his room, and into his bed.

 

* * *

 

 


	13. R&R

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our hero actually stops to fucking rest for a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while. It's kind of appropriate that this fic has been on hiatus while Poe is recovering from his most recent emotional shock. This is just an interstitial little chapter while I get back in the mood. Not much happens here.

* * *

 

As a civilian, Petrel probably should have been uncomfortable with his boss and his landlord conferring behind his back about his health.

He'd never had a landlord before. (For that matter, he'd never really had a boss, either; not in the sense of someone who extracted profit from his labor. Poe had always been just one, rapidly ascending link in the chain of command.) He was given to believe that he was supposed to hold some antagonism toward each of them. But he really liked Tank, and _antagonistic_ didn't begin to describe his mixed feelings about Gram's underground activities.

He should have been uncomfortable with it. But as it was, it was entirely too familiar.

_[Well, we need him up there, but we need him in one piece. You sure you don't have anything stronger?]_

 

The easy availability of high-test narcs got him through another day of bedrest. He could see why people got into the stuff. It was nice to sleep through the day, surfacing occasionally to the groggy fantasy of a humble port city mechanic, temporarily beset by fatuous delusions. _Senator Organa- that's a good one. Maybe I should cut down on the spice._

The narcs dropped his blood pressure like a stone, and that was familiar, too. The drugs were like subspace, that feeling of being both weightless and at the same time too heavy to move. He felt no pain, no fear, no worries. Not even about the fact that there was no one there watching him, to make sure he kept breathing.

He drifted between sleep and waking, floating on the surface of arousal. He touched himself idly, and indulged himself in the suggestion he'd made to Darlo. He piled the blankets over his thighs and pushed his face into the pillow, and imagined the handsome, talented young prostitute taking his boneless body, imagined moaning into the hand tight over his mouth, and slipped back into a sweaty, hazy stupor.

Sometime after dark he woke with his heart racing. It wasn't the searing pain of heartache, or the pounding of anxiety. Nothing seemed wrong with him, except that his heart was ribbiting away without any exertion on his part. It couldn't be a rebound from the narcs, he thought, as he swallowed another one. Not after taking them for just a day. He lay there with his fingers on his pulse, and slipped under again before he could put it together. It wasn't a rebound from the drugs; it was the first time since his escape that he'd gone a whole day without drinking.

 

* * *

 

The last thing he or his heart needed was another day alone in his own head, so he insisted on going back to work the next day. He promised not to do anything too strenuous.

It was nice to be back at the wash station. _His_ station. With his tools in order and discrete tasks at hand. Comfortable, humble, routine. Safe from those wild notions of galactic espionage.

He asked Niner how Tank had been getting by, and whether there had been any interesting customers. He worked his way around to mentioning his visit to the C90's former workplace. Casually, between the parts he was cleaning, he chatted about the cheezy, colorful gimmicks the makers used to dress up the games.

The processor indicator didn't skip a beat, though. Petrel wondered if there was an electronic equivalent of the narcs he'd been on. Or perhaps, more analogously, of the happy places that he used to escape. Places he'd sometimes gone too deep into, places he'd sometimes abused the way that other people abused drugs.

Everyone knew about void droids- the ones who went mad from lack of input and came up with their own imperatives. They were a terrifying spectre, but they were mainly gangs that had formed after their crews had perished. Niner, though, had been alone for the gods knew how long.

There were cases, and anyone who gave a fuck knew about them. Cases of prisoners, criminals and prisoners of war alike. Especially the ones that had been in solitary confinement. Prisoners whose minds had never really come back from their captivity, even after their bodies had been liberated. Junkies who didn't last long, veterans who sat silently behind inscrutably vacant stares.

Where was Niner? Was ey suffering, or was ey in some happy place? Or was ey as vacant as ey appeared?

Petrel had spent two days in the blissful embrace of cheap narcotics, and he could absolutely see himself retreating back there someday, maybe for good. If he were to go down that path... would he want someone to murder him and consider it a mercy?

He didn't know.

 

* * *

 

The battle at Takodana hadn't made much of a splash in the Core. There had been some reports of a gangland turf battle out in the Western Reaches, but rumours of a clash between the two militarized ideological factions were deemed irresponsible.

Mos Eisley, on the other hand, could talk of little else. Everyone here was entangled in the black market in one way or another. Even relatively legit businesses still depended on credits that flowed through pirate holds. The destruction at Maz's castle affected everyone here to some degree.

The spacers who came through had plenty of fingers (and other appendages) to point. And their noses and ears and various sensory organs were tuned to the winds of war, ever alert for angles to exploit. Petrel did his best to stay in the back workshop and keep his head down. When he had to come out to translate, he kept it brief and professional and excused himself promptly.

Tank let him stay in the shop for the long mid-day break. He split a narc tab in half and curled up on Tank's fold-out cot and didn't think about any of it.

 

By the end of the day he was fucking jonesing for a drink. He was sure the talk would be louder and the opinions stronger in the local cantinas, but Tank invited him out, and Tank was a pretty apolitical guy. He took him to a place where the music was just loud enough to excuse them from talking too much. A variety of dancers kept their eyes half-occupied. Not as talented as the girls at the Palace Room, but a more diverse lineup, at least.

They got in a couple of tall jinnintonnixes before any arguments got too loud, and agreed it was time to split. Tank pestered him again about his comm, and he told him to remind him again in the morning, and they said goodnight.

 

But he didn't want to go back to the hostel, either, to face Gram and his serene, generous, morally ambiguous face and his stupid Kenobi-esque beard. He didn't want to think about Ana or Finn or the nameless little boy Tyff wanted to knit slippers for.

But it was a nice night for a walk. Late evening, really, right at the most habitable time in the desert cycle, when the cool was still a welcome relief and before it got really chilly. Plan A was on hold, until he was more confident in his health and had had a chance to talk to Darlo again. But it wouldn't hurt to take a stroll through the port, get the lay of the land. With his modest outfit and dirty hair and frankly exhausted appearance, anyone would have to be pretty desperate to proposition him.

So he turned away from the route back to the hostel, and down toward the North Port.

 

* * *

 

 


	14. I hope you're proud of yourself, mister.

* * *

 

It was a nice evening, and people were out and about in the port- doing maintenance put off during the heat of the day, or just hanging out by their ships, drinking and gossiping and enjoying the night air. Petrel caught a couple of whistles, but kept walking. He wasn't here to do anything. He was just here to look around.

He was _just looking_ when a tall, elegant figure up ahead caught his eye, because _that_ was something you didn't see every day.

A generation ago, a Kaminoan in a port like this would almost certainly have been a fugitive. Slavery had since been outlawed under the New Republic, but the planet still maintained an outrageously oppressive caste system, and plenty of workers there were slaves in all but name. Yet emigration remained rare. It was unusual to see Kaminoans off-world, except for elite, ruling-caste delegations to the the halls of power in the Core.

[Poe had known just one, a blue-eyed bartender at a cafe on Mirren. The guy was arrogant almost to the point of rudeness, but Poe assumed there was some story there and didn't take it personally. There was indeed a story: As a greenhorned immigrant, he'd been hired for jobs that, however menial they might seem to anyone else, would have been strictly forbidden to him back home. Even after he'd convinced himself that no one was going to punish him for taking these jobs, it was hard to get over a vague, constant anxiety that occasionally coalesced into panic attacks. By the time he'd worked his way up to bartending, he'd developed that arrogance as a kind of armor against anyone who even thought about doubting his right to be there.]

Her head tilted on her long neck, looking him over. Returning her gaze became awkward as he drew closer. Eventually his neck was craned too far to even pretend to be cool, so he grinned up at her. That... might have been a smile in return? Hard to tell.

"You party?" she asked in a smooth, indifferent voice. He wasn't sure if that was a proposition or just an invitation.

"I've been known to party, yeah."

She nodded around the side of the freighter.

"You see my friend over there?"

He frowned at a motley assortment of beings gathered around a tiny brazier, where a Sullustan was warming their hands. He'd rather hoped she'd wanted to _party_ with him herself.

"Which one?"

"The big guy."

So, the... human, definitely human. Albeit one who looked like he might have a Crolute or two in his family tree. Petrel winced.

"It's his birthday."

He gave her a deeply unimpressed a look over the obvious fib. She shrugged and held out a vial of spice, a few hits worth. He squinted an appraising eye at it as if he knew what he was looking at.

"Kiel's Moxie. Have a drink with us. Just talk to him."

He rolled his neck while he calculated. He didn't know what kind of high _Kiel's Moxie_  produced- was he supposed to do it now, to get in the mood, or would it fuck him up? Was it considered _good stuff_? Did it represent payment for whatever her friend wanted, or was it just a little bribe for giving him a chance?

He didn't know, but _You have to be in charge_ , Darlo had said.

"Sure. I'll talk to him." He took the vial and stuck it in his pocket for later.

"He's _shy_ ," she said, earnestly.

"You don't say."

 

He followed her around to the little group, who greeted him with friendly disinterest. Besides the big guy and the Sullustan, there was someone hidden under a heavy cloak, and a rather intimidating middle-aged human woman. Her flinty eyes and leathery face suggested that there were more than a few notches in her gunbelt.

His target occupied a toolbox, and occupied it pretty fully. Petrel nudged the guy's knee with his own.

"Hey, room for two there, buddy?"

The guy made a move to get up and offer him the seat, so he pressed closer.

"No, no, stay and keep me warm. You look like you run hot."

The group snorted derisively, but the guy edged over uncomfortably and made space for him.

"What?" Petrel pouted at the others. "Some of us get chilly when the suns go down."

"Be plenty hot around here soon," a feminine voice muttered from under the cloak.

 _< "Let's not talk about any fucking wars,">_ the Sullustan jabbered back.

"Why not? War's good for business." Leatherface slowly turned her head to smirk at Petrel. He didn't have a good retort, so he smirked right back and eyed her up and down with a look that said _I wouldn't fuck you for a thousand credits_ , which made her laugh out loud.

The Kaminoan handed him a mug of warm, buttery-tasting schnapps. It was hard to make small talk around here. He couldn't exactly ask where they were coming from or what they were hauling. But there was the one thing that was on everyone's minds.

"You all been out to see the destruction yet?"

"These fuckers ain't really the volunteering type," the cloak scoffed.

_< "Oh, and you are?">_

"Is it volunteering if it buys you goodwill down the line?"

"Down the line we'll all be dead," Leatherface said flatly.

"I'd go," the hill of flesh next to him said. "She's always been nice to me."

"Well, you must be alright, then." Petrel leaned against his side. "She's pretty perceptive. What's your name, hon?"

"Jorgan. What's yours?"

"Petrel." He put his hand out, palm up, in Jorgan's lap, and the guy took it delicately.

"That's a pretty name. Like a bird."

"It is a bird. They stay in the air and never come down except to breed." He rubbed the guy's fingers between his own. "Mmm, you have strong hands."

Jorgan laughed nervously, and the Sullustan told them to get a room already. The Kaminoan spoke up tactfully.

"Show him those aerials you took. Jorgan is a _magnificent_ holographer."

"Oh, I'd _love_ to see them."

The guy fumbled for his datapad, and the cloak whispered a blasphemous prayer- she had clearly been encouraging him to take Petrel aboard the ship. They turned out to be pretty decent recon images, and the desert canyons and washes had a kind of harsh beauty.

"Oh, those are _gorgeous_. Do you think I could see them in hi-res?"

"Yeah, show him," the others urged.

"Um."

"You have a better projector?" Petrel prodded. "Inside, maybe?"

"You really want to see them?"

"I do." He stood up and held out his hand. "C'mon, hon. Show me."

...

 

Jorgan was shy, but he wasn't an idiot.

"You didn't really come here to see my holos, did you?"

Petrel was sorely tempted to say yes, because he was not looking forward to this. But dragging it out wasn't going to make it any easier.

"No, I didn't." He smiled and dashed his eyes down to where the guy's tunic hung out from the shelf of his belly.

The guy's smile was a small one- almost like he would have been just as happy to hang out and show off his pictures. Like he was doing this just to satisfy his crewmates. Which made two of them. He led Petrel back to his bunk and dialed a hard chip up to thirty credits.

"Cool. Great."

"Do you think I could... touch you, too? Just for a few minutes?"

Touch? He hadn't been expecting that. _Where_ , he almost asked, and then answered for himself.

"Over the clothes?"

"Sure."

"Above the waist?"

Jorgan chewed his lip and didn't answer.

"Over the clothes," he repeated firmly.

"Take your jacket off?"

"Sure."

He dialed the chip up to fifty, which- yeah. Fuck yeah, he'd take that. He took his jacket off and started to hold out his wrist, but the guy set the chip aside. Right, it probably worked differently out here than in those high-end brothels he'd been in. He moved smoothly- he hoped- through the _faux pas_ and took the guy's hand.

"C'mere, hon."

 

He didn't have to say it twice; once the credits were on the table the guy lost a lot of his shyness. His guts clenched into knots as it hit him that he had actually _committed_ to this, that he was actually doing this. Jorgan's thick hands were soon all over him, feeling up his ribs and hips, pulling him close to nuzzle his hair.

Petrel fondled him back as affectionately as he could. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that under all the flab and lack of game was a beating heart and lungs, behind the breath in his hair was a mind that saw beauty, a soul that needed affection like anyone else. Jorgan cupped and hefted his ass, felt out his hipbones and started to push his thumb into his groin- and froze when he felt the pistol in his waistband.

"What's wrong, hon?"

"Kriff, things aren't that bad here, are they?"

"Sure they are."

"Shit." Jorgan seemed genuinely disturbed. "I'm sorry. That's terrible."

"It's okay, man. I'm sure you've seen some rough places in your time." Petrel took the hand and moved it back up to his flank.

"Yeah, but shit."

Okay, it was probably time to move things along, here. Petrel worked his own hands lower, tracing the contours of the guy's thighs while he nosed around in his hair some more. Up between his legs, he palmed the guy's fly and honestly couldn't tell if he was hard under there.

The guy let him know when he was ready, though, when the breath in his hair came sharper, when one hand came to rest on his hip and the other on his shoulder, with that slight but unmistakable pressure. He dropped to his knees and set to loosening the guy's trousers, with a little assistance.

 

He had to twist his head to the side to get at it around the guy's pooch, but other than that it wasn't much of a challenge. It wasn't very big. He didn't need to use his throat at all, just sucked and bobbed and made hungry, encouraging little noises. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't mind a little thrusting. Okay, under normal circumstances he liked quite a bit of thrusting. And he'd never been crazy about having to do all the work. 

But he understood that Jorgan was being polite and respectful, and he appreciated that. He pushed the guy's hand into his hair, letting him know it was okay to grab on, but he didn't seem to want to. He just petted his head lightly, and when he got close, grabbed onto the bunk with one hand for balance.

The guy whispered a curse; his hips jerked and trembled as he restrained himself from thrusting. Petrel sucked hard and swallowed fast and tried not to taste too much, and then he rested his forehead against the guy's pillowy flesh while that thick hand petted him over and over.

He tucked him in and looked up; the guy looked nicely dazed. He sat on the bunk with an exhausted huff. Petrel smiled at him. It was pretty satisfying to see him like that, and also a relief that it hadn't taken long. He stood up and nodded at the card on the table; Jorgan waved a hand at it, _help yourself_. He touched it to his comm and watched fifty fresh credits pop up, and that was satisfying, too. Real satisfying, so much so that he had to make an effort to hide it.

He shrugged his jacket back on. It was weird to just leave, but that was clearly what was supposed to happen now.

"Alright. Be safe out there, buddy."

"You too." Jorgan's eyes widened and he sat up a little. "I mean it- if it's really that bad around here, watch out for yourself, okay?"

That was weird, because everyone knew the city's reputation, right?

"I will. And hey. Your aerials are really good. Really. They're beautiful."

"Tssh. _You're_ beautiful."

Petrel just winked, and let himself out.

 

He was extremely pleased with himself for having had the tactical foresight to leave a few sips of his schnapps in the main cabin. 

...

 

The crew were still drinking around the brazier, and he felt like he should say something- _thanks for the drink_ , at least. But they ignored him, so he didn't say anything. He waited until he was a discreet distance away to pop one of the chewsticks in his mouth, very grateful to have them.

 

* * *

 


	15. Nails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So fucking easy. Why didn't everyone do this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for super shitty language

* * *

 

It was stupid, to be so pleased with those fifty credits. Stupid, but godsdamn, he was fucking pleased with them. Enough to pay for his room, a couple of drinks, and food and water the next day. With a few credits left over to put towards some new clothes at some point.

It hadn't exactly been pleasant, but it had been _so_ fucking easy.

 

* * *

 

It was even easier, the next night. The last of the sparkly little tops was flimsy enough to fit in his pocket. After work, he stopped at a port-side tavern for a couple of shots of confidence, changed in the fresher, and sauntered out, hands in his pockets, trying to look casual.

He spotted a likely mark easily enough. He was loitering up ahead, arms crossed over the barrel of his ship's nose cannon, looking up and down the duracrete lane. He saw the moment the guy spotted him, saw the shift in attention reflected in his posture before he could even make out his eyes. He actually looked away as Petrel approached- unsure, maybe, that this was what he hoped it was, so Petrel put a little more swivel in his step until he was close enough to wink and drawl, "Hey. Nice gun."

They didn't even board the ship, just went behind the turret, between the thick trunks of the front struts. It was dark enough to be somewhat discreet, and if anyone saw, well. They could be next, if they wanted.

This guy was ready. He set a quarter chip down on the butt of the landing gear without any particular request. He didn't want to fool around, just wanted to get his dick wet. He also wasn't shy about digging right into Petrel's hair. It wasn't long before he was using that grip to push him away, whispering urgently for him to _slow down_.

_Ha, what do you think this is, pal?_

He backed off briefly, lips tight and pouty around the glans, and blinked up with wide, innocent eyes. Everyone liked that, he could see it in the way their eyes widened to match his own, and this guy was no exception. He let him have a moment to pet his hair and tell him how good he was, and then went in for the kill. The guy gasped against the turret as he came in his throat. Petrel tucked him back in and planted a cheeky little kiss on his shorts. He stood up, pocketed the chip, and flicked the guy's belt, hanging loose against his thigh.

"Need help with that?"

"Naw. Fuck."

"Okay. See ya round, then."

"Yeah. Fuck."

 ...

 

So fucking easy. Why didn't _everyone_ do this? He'd definitely head out earlier tomorrow. For now, he just had time to wash it down with a couple of drinks and still be home by midnight. He headed back toward town, feeling awfully pleased with himself.

Until a silhouette stepped out from behind a freighter. Not with the uncertain movements of the people out shopping, but with purpose. The purpose, he guessed, of someone that had seen him and knew he was carrying loose credits. The pistol was in his hand as he slowed, looking for a way to skirt around this confrontation.

"Whoa, sweetheart." The guy's voice was soft and patronizing. "Let's put the gun away."

"Don't _sweetheart_ me. Beat it." He shook the pistol.

"Now, honey, let's not escalate a simple misunderstanding into something messy, okay?"

"Escalate? Who's the one jumping out of shadows, here?"

The guy chuckled. "These are _my_ shadows, love."

"I said knock it off with the sweet talk."

"Alright, _cunt_ , we can talk about your fucking attitude later. Right now, I just need the fucking money, and for you to put the fucking gun away."

"Ain't no fucking money."

"The money that nice gentleman just gave you."

"Fuck off. What I do with my friends is none of your business."

"First of all, it's _exactly_ my business."

Petrel snarled in disgust. These sorts of protection rackets had been outlawed decades ago, in the same suite of acts that had outlawed slavery.

"Tch, your face'll freeze. And secondly, _I'm_ your friend, here, doll."

"Not here to make friends. Or does the _fucking gun_ not tell you that?"

"Oh, everybody needs friends, hon. Specially in a rough town like this."

"What part of _this_ ," he shook the blaster, "don't you understand?" He could kill this guy so easy. But could he get away with it? There was no one in sight, but he was sure there were people watching.

"Look, I'm trying to be reasonable here. I let you get away with it last night 'cause I thought you were just passing through. But if you're gonna insist on being a bitch I will absolutely treat you like one."

Rage blossomed in his flesh, burning.

"What is it with you people and your _fucking language_?"

"Aww. Bit of a sore spot, there?"

He could feel it; it was almost familiar, now. The burning in his hands, red flashing behind his eyes, _kill him, and make it messy, make him hurt_.

"Sweetheart. _Please_. Let's just put that away. We don't want any accidents."

"Accidents? I've killed a lot of people, buddy, and none of them have been accidents."

For the first time, the guy looked a little nervous.

"I promise you, one filthy scrounging little _pimp_ ain't gonna trouble my conscience one wink."

"Oh, I see," the guy said, softly. "You're not just new _here_. You're just _new_."

_Shit._

"You have no idea how this works, do you?"

Petrel swallowed.

"I know you think I'm the bad guy here, kid."

"Yeah, ya think?"

"Maybe I am. But I tell you what. You take me out, there's gonna be fallout. And most of it's gonna fall right on the heads of people that you probably _don't_ think are bad guys."

Well. There was probably something to that. A power vacuum in the underworld was just as dangerous as one in politics.

"I don't wanna hurt no one," Petrel allowed. "So how about you just tell me where to stay away from, and we forget this ever happened?"

The guy shook his head again. "I never forget a face, doll. Specially not one like that. But I tell you what. You stay away from the North Port, here."

"Fine."

"And you try your luck anywhere else. Try the East Port. Say hi to Bax for me while he's slicing you a new cunt. Or maybe in the old town. Maybe you'll catch Mother Man in a forgiving mood."

Yeesh, that was... evocative.

"I'll tell you how nice I am. If- and I mean _if_ \- there's anything left of that pretty face when she's done with you? You can come crawling back here and pay me what you owe me, and we'll have a nice little talk about the value of friendship. Ask for Nails, when you change your mind."

_Fuck._

"Go on." He brushed the air with his fingers. "Run along, sweetheart. And take good care of my money til you get back, okay? Don't let anything happen to it."

Petrel backed away until he'd cleared another freighter, until he'd sidled behind it, and then turned and didn't run, but walked very fast back toward town.

 

...

 

Fuck.

 

He should have killed him.

 

...

 

He was boiling with indignation, with the fucking rottenness of it. The drink he stopped for did little to quench it. He set the empty glass down heavily and looked at the time. He had a choice: leave now and make his fucking _curfew_ , fuck. He couldn't imagine going back sober to his barren little cloister, where there wasn't even room to pace.

Or stay out all night, getting hammered. He'd have to pay for a room, which would blow his whole break-even formula out of the stratosphere. Hell, while he was at it, he might as well take the credits he'd just earned and pass them on to some other punk.

And if he did that, there was no way he was making it in to his stupid _job_. The one he didn't actually need. But. He would be one royal fucking asshole if he did that.

Out of spite, he threw the quarter chip down as a tip.

_There. I took care of your fucking money._

 

...

 

He pulled his linen shirt back on and let his feet make all the right turns, taking him back to the hostel. But the sound of his own steps reminded him of how pleased he'd been walking the same path the night before. He wanted to feel that way again. This sucked and it wasn't right and it wasn't fair.

He felt downright petulant, and he could feel the guy mocking him for it in his oily, condescending voice. _Smile, sweetheart. Smile for your new friend_. All the rage just bubbled over again at the memory of the pet names he'd called him. Sweetheart? _Love_? What the fuck, that word had no place in that ratfucker's mouth.

 

* * *

 

Gram took one look at him and asked what the hell had happened. He frowned down at his clothes; everything seemed to be in order. A little sand on his knees maybe. So... probably his face, then. He was fine, he said, but Gram stood and beckoned him into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

"IS IT YOUR ANGINA? YOU SHOULD BE RESTING, STILL."

"No, no. I'm feeling much better. You don't have any liquor, do you?"

Gram pointed up at a collection of half-empty bottles, heretofore camouflaged by their dusty shoulders and faded labels.

"DOES LIQUOR GO BAD?"

"I don't think so. Not if it's strong enough."

He was drawn to something red and firey-looking, like the anger he was stifling.

"GO AHEAD." Gram waved, suggesting that it was acceptable to drink out of the bottle. "I DON'T THINK ANYONE ELSE WILL BE WANTING IT."

He took a swig, and _oh_ , that was the stuff, sharp and nasty. He imagined it dissolving his rage, like the solvents he used to dissolve rust and corrosion from machine parts. He exhaled and tried to feel the anger steaming out along with the boozy vapor. He made friends with the bottle while Gram fussed over the heater, until he set two mugs down to steep and asked if Petrel wanted to talk about it.

"It's not that big a deal. Really. It's just- someone tried to mug me on my way home. That's all. I'm fine."

The old man raised an eyebrow; his lips quirked ever so slightly.

"TRIED?"

_Yeah, that's right. Tried._

He even smiled, just a little, as he confirmed, "Tried."

Gram looked him over approvingly.

"GOOD FOR YOU. STILL. YOU MUST HAVE BEEN SCARED."

"Not really. Mostly just pissed. Pissed that guys like that are out there just... _preying_ on people and getting away with it. It's not right, you know?"

He watched something sad cross the man's face, and realized what he'd just said. He looked down at his tea.

_Shit._

When Gram spoke again, his voice was softer. Petrel couldn't tell if it was an effort he was making, or if all the hollering was the real affectation.

"When we speak of _fear_ being the first step on the path to the Dark side,"

_First step? Little late for that, brother._

But he knew the sound of a sermon coming on when he heard one, so he nodded politely and blew on his tea, because for all his many, many failings, he wasn't quite rude enough to keep swigging out of a bottle while someone was preaching.

"It's not only fear for our own lives that tempts us. Fear for the well-being of others can be just as powerful."

Was that it? Was he so enraged because the guy was exploiting _other_ people? That's probably how Poe would have felt about it. But he wasn't sure that's how Petrel felt.

"Especially if one is cursed with a loving heart."

"I know. I know that's how Vader fell."

"Vader was _seduced_ , but yes."

     [ _Show me._

_I trust you._

_Chrome and leather, kneeling at his feet._ ]

"One needn't know the Force to understand the temptation."

"I do, though. I know it's real."

"Every religion has its light and dark, its angels and demons. And most of them understand that the most insidious demons are not those that appeal to greed or to lust. Those are easy enough for good-hearted beings to vanquish. It's the ones that masquerade as angels, that appeal to righteousness, that ensnare the best among us."

"Right. The road to perdition being paved with good intentions."

"Indeed. And once one has stepped onto that path, nothing is so easily mistaken for righteousness as pride."

Well, that wasn't him at all. He was under no illusions about being a righteous being anymore. And if he had any pride left, he wouldn't be here, would he?

 _Banthashit_ , Raven had said to that.

Was she right? Was he proud? Did he think he was _better_ than all this? Did he think he was better than Tank, because he'd had a better education? Did he think he was better than Gram, because he'd touched the Force in a way few had, that few would ever want to? Did he think he was better than Nails?

Well... yeah? He hoped so, anyway. But did he think he was better than any of the other beings that worked for him? That the rules here didn't apply to him? That he was above it all just because he had options?

 _An idiot and an asshole_ , she'd called him. _No one chooses this._

It didn't feel like a choice. It felt like fate, like the destination was already determined and the best he could do as a free being was to try to steer the ride.

But maybe that was an illusion. Maybe he did have a choice. Maybe he could just settle into a quiet, anonymous little life as a mechanic. Get up every day before first sunrise. Do his job. Clean up after himself. Maybe take up gambling if things got too boring.

Maybe he could just... keep going. Keep his head down. Grow gray and leathery under the suns. Find a nice barstool to hold down in the evenings, boring his neighbors again and again with the story of that one time when he'd met that famous pirate, the real-life Jo Danger.

Maybe he'd spend some of his honestly-earned credits on the other end of the transaction, paying pretty boys to keep him company.

_You know, I tried it once. When I was younger._

_Not your cup, huh?_

_No, I... I kinda liked it._

He'd look down, avoiding the sympathy on the younger man's face, until he felt a playful nudge.

_Well. We could always... pretend, if you want._

 

He was likable enough. He'd make some acquaintances, maybe even a few that he could call friends. When he finally succumbed to liver failure, maybe a few people would even come to his funeral.

_He was a real nice guy._

_Really nice._

_A great friend to droids._

_Great sense of humor._

After a few beats, someone would repeat _a real nice guy_ , because there wouldn't be much else to say about him.

 

* * *

 

He lay in his bed in the PTs feeling numb and empty, like a corpse that hadn't started rotting yet. He ran his hands over his body, trying to feel it through the cloth. He remembered the smoldering admiration in Ulon's eyes as he'd examined his wounds, the ones from _that_ fight.

And he'd no sooner felt a little twitch of interest, than it wasn't Ulon examining him, but Nails, inspecting his body like a beast he was considering buying.

It didn't feel as bad, in his imagination. His hands, going where they wanted without asking. The dry, callous assessment of his worth. The pet names in that smooth, patronizing voice. Even the other names- he was going to have to make peace with them at some point. He was a little old to be so thin-skinned about it.

A little tracer round of anger flashed through his reverie. It wasn't about _maturity_. It was about fucking decency. It was about not legitimizing bigotry by using its fucking language.

_Fine. You're right. You're fucking righteous. But you're here, now, and this is how it is, here. You can think you're better than them if you want, but it's not going to change just because your precious ears are here now._

He tried them out in his mind. One hand slid into his shorts, thumb stroking his dick while his fingers invaded downward, splaying, _spread your legs for me, bitch_ , the other hand on his throat, under his jaw, a fingertip at his lips, _show me what a pretty cunt you are._

His hand ignored his growing erection in favor of molesting himself, _spread your legs, whore, show me how you take care of that little fuckhole,_ and he drenched his finger in saliva. He could feel his heart pounding, a ripple of hot-cold that said he might be sick in a few minutes. He was so afraid that someone might hear him or _sense_ him, because what he was doing was so much more shameful than ordinary masturbation.

_Shame, sweetheart? What do you need that for?_

He remembered thinking, _this life is nothing but shame_.

_No, dollface, you got it all wrong. Shame is just the shadow of your stupid pride._

_I'm not proud._

His hand flicked a testicle, hard, a little punishment for lying.

_Why you holding on to that, honey? You're just hurting yourself. Let it go. Make this easy on the both of us._

He felt himself wavering, between sickening anxiety and blissful surrender.

_I thought you liked this._

Two fingers pushed into his mouth, to the back of his jaw, testing his reflexes, making him drool.

_Submission? It's just like that, honey. Call it whatever you want. Just give up. Give up, let me take care of you, and you can live in that happy place for the rest of your life._

He could do that. Take orders, not think, stay high forever. The fingers pushed deeper into his throat. The voice praised him for taking them so well, the other hand rewarded him with a brief little tickle of pleasure before twisting painfully deeper.

_You ready?_

_I..._

_You ready, love?_

_Yes_

_Give up?_

_I guess..._

_I said, give up?_

_Yes_

_Good. That's a good boy. A good bitch. Whose bitch are you?_

_Yours_

_Are you mine, love?_

_Yes_

_Then... give me. What you owe me._

It was like an incendiary grenade. Arousal evaporated in a fresh white burst of anger, and he couldn't get his hands out of himself fast enough. He grabbed a sock off the floor to wipe his fingers with, and curled in his bed, stung and ashamed of having been so turned on.

 

Five or ten credits, whatever the guy's cut was? _That_ was the part he had a problem with?

Except in his mind it came out in Nails's voice- _Oh, is that what's got you so worked up, sweetheart?-_ and he bolted to his feet and paced the three strides the room afforded. It just made him feel even more trapped, so he pressed his face up to the narrow ventilation slit and stared out at the lights of Mos Eisley. The empty desert behind was lost in their glare, like the stars in daylight.

Kriff, would he really never be among them again? Was this really where he'd come to die? Whether soon and violently, if he tried to defy the black-market system; or years hence of liver failure, if he kept his head down?

_Soon and violently- that's what you came here looking for, right?_

He held himself again, nothing sexual but rather reassuring. He clutched at the cloth of the familiar gym uniform. _You can keep that_ , Ulon had said. _I literally have a lifetime supply_. He knew it was true, because Poe had had the same supply.

 

Poe had never really had to deal with money. Sure, he went on leave sometimes, or on missions where he had to spend credits to fit in. But he'd never paid rent in his life. He'd always had a room to come back to. Always had a mess hall to eat in. Clean clothes. Medical care. Clean fucking drinking water.

It wasn't like they didn't pay him. But it wasn't much, and most of the time, there hadn't been much to spend it on. He didn't drink much, _couldn't_ drink much even if he'd wanted to. Wasn't much of a clotheshorse. Played cards sometimes, mostly for the company, and won as much as he lost. Those credits just circulated around base; they may as well have been playing for shiny pebbles.

What would Poe have done, if someone had stepped out from the shadows demanding his sabbacc winnings?

Oh, ha, he knew the answer to that.

[Republic City, late at night. Iolo had seen the guy before Poe possibly could have.

"Bogey, one o'clock. Just keep walking."

When the guy rolled out, blaster level, they parted and walked past him.

"Hey! Don't make me shoot you fuckers in the back!"

"You must need it more than I do," Poe had laughed, and tossed a chip on the ground behind him, without even feeling out the denomination. They kept walking, and didn't look back, and didn't get shot.]

That had been a lifetime ago.

 

He sank back into the bed, envious of those young men's cavalier confidence. He ran his hands over his body again, not thinking of anyone else, this time, but a self-check, like a droid running through its systems. His heartrate was back to normal, as far as he could tell. The only trace of the brawl on Socorro was so deep in the flesh of his hips, he had to press hard to get to it. He rubbed at the bruise on his knuckle- there was no bruise. He held his hand up, inspecting it: the swelling had disappeared at some point, without him even noticing.

Well, then.

That seemed like a sign, if ever there was one. He fished the Magu signet out of his satchel and slipped it on to his right middle finger. It fit perfectly, snug and heavy. A vicious smile spread across Magu's lips. Let anyone think about fucking with his Petrel. Let them fucking try.

He wrapped his irredeemably dangerous arms around that frightened, wounded, flightless bird. He had the sense memory of it, from his childhood. Of holding its broken wing against its body, of its feathers so soft and its heart impossibly fast. Its tiny bones had felt so fragile, even to his soft child's hands. It had gone limp in his grasp, as if it knew. Knew that it would just hurt itself further if it tried to fly right now, knew that the straightjacket of his little hands kept it safe.

He curled under the blankets, wrapped in his own arms, and mouthed silent reassurances to himself, like the ones Poe had spoken to the wounded little songbird. _You're safe, you're so pretty, I'm going to take care of you, it's going to be alright_. And Magu swore to Petrel that if he ever saw that ratfucker again, he'd knock his ratfucking teeth right out of his ratfucking face.

 

* * *

 

 


End file.
